


A Midsummer's Saga

by cresserelle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Affectionate Insults, Banter, Boys in Chains, Castles, Character Development, Court Politics, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Forbidden Attraction, Friendship/Love, Gentle Orgasms, Happy Sex, Hard Orgasms, Historical Fantasy, Horses, Humor, Imprisonment, Light Bondage, Masturbation, Middle Ages, Midsummer, Minor Violence, Nobility, Novel, Oral Sex, Original Universe, Pagan Gods, Peril, Pining, Playful Sex, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Princes & Princesses, Sex, Slow Build, Sneaking, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 03:29:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 48
Words: 77,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cresserelle/pseuds/cresserelle
Summary: There are runestones among trees in my back garden. This sort of thing happens when you live in an old land.The stones are faded, mossy, very dirty.The story carved in them is also very dirty.So I’ll transcribe it and put it here, where it belongs.-Medieval/fantasy character-driven adventure smut. Come for porn, stay for plot and feelings. Work complete!





	1. Another Time

**Author's Note:**

> This thing is written to be enjoyed for its characters, story and setting, but if you're just in an emergency to get off, roll over the exclamation mark for a list chapters with graphic sexual content. You horndog  
>  
> 
> !

When night fell all the village was already gathered on the ritual field, among the bonfires and the effigies, and the air was heavy with the smoke from the herbs that the shamans were burning in their stone censers. Drumbeats carried over the meadow, shaking up dancers, stirring up blood, and ending up absorbed by the forest’s black wall. The sacred flags fastened around the trees flashed red and yellow and purple and there was laughter in the night, and the old bard took his place under the old oak and started singing from the old sagas, his voice reverberating and pouring over the field like smooth dark wine. The new warrior initiates were apart from the rest, dancing around their own fire by the forest edge, the white runes painted on their skin shining bright and their muscles flexing and twisting to the beat in the soft half-shadow. The other young people of the village found this relevant to their interests and gathered watching close by. Every so often an initiate would take one of them by the hand and, after a short and to-the-point conversation, lead them away from the fire, into the darkness under the trees.

Kontaria, travel guides would claim if they existed at the time, was a land that knew how to party well.

Yet not everyone shared the festive mood. A little way off the initiates’ fire, a boy named Aerin was sitting under an elm, pretending not to watch. Foy was among the giggling crowd too and Aerin saw her laugh as Bovo grabbed her round the waist, exchanged a few words, and carried her from his sight.

A pair of iron spurs that Aerin was holding clinked sadly. He sighed and looked away, to the hundreds of people shimmering in the light of other bonfires, when suddenly behind him someone spoke.

“The fuck are you sulking for, my man?”

The boy turned to glare at the interrupter of his solitude, which turned out to be Leapfrog, presently emerging from the smoke.

“I’m not sulking. Piss off, Leapfrog.”

“Yeah, you’re a right ray of sunshine tonight.” Leapfrog looked towards the white-painted dancers and quaffed oat beer from a cup he was carrying. “Oi, two more years and we’re gonna have our warrior initiation night ourselves and we’ll have plenty of gals to choose from, all wanting to bone us for good luck. Just gotta survive until twenty.” Aerin fluttered his head and let his hair fall over his eyes, hiding the blue behind the auburn. Leapfrog was about to continue, when suddenly he noticed the spurs in his friend’s hands.

“Uh dude! What the fuck, you got your iron spurs?!”

Now Aerin smiled reluctantly. “Yeah. Just today. Old Uradech said that if I keep working hard I’m going to distinguish myself as an excellent rider, end quote.”

“Oh, I’m honoured as fuck to be talking to you, then!” Leapfrog took a deep, unsteady bow. “Ha, too bad you got them on the initiation day, that kinda steals your thunder. Let’s drink to that anyway! Come on, I’ll lead you to beer. Just don’t lose the spurs, would be embarrassing.” A thought struck him. “Wait, why did you bring them here anyway? They’re sorta unwieldy like.”

Aerin glanced away and blushed. Leapfrog’s eyes glinted. Again he looked to the initiates’ fire, and connected the dots. “Oh. Oh, you wanted to impress Foy, you huge dork.”

Aerin stood up urgently. “I didn’t want to impress anyone, don’t make shit up,” he said, with a lot more emphasis than was strictly necessary to communicate his point.

“You should have just talked to her, you know? You absolute weapon! Now she got that warrior fever and stuff is going to be a lot more complicated with her.”

Aerin folded his arms on his chest and looked away with unconvincing indifference. “You’re an idiot, Leapfrog. I’m out of here. Don’t get shitfaced and throw up all over the bard.”

“Hey, I promise nothin.”

Leapfrog watched Aerin disappear in the dark. That poor bastard, if he hadn’t waited so long he’d actually have a very good chance with the girl. Well, impressing her with those spurs wasn’t that bad of a plan – this was Kontaria, and your horse-riding skills made up for a considerable portion of your overall coolness. Thing was, though, being initiated as a warrior was even cooler than earning riding distinctions.

Well, too bad that the festival’s date had been so suddenly pushed back to tonight. If it only took place next month, in June like always, then maybe Aerin would’ve been in luck…

It was actually very strange that they had moved it. Auspicious omens, they said. Well, maybe. Leapfrog didn’t know a whole lot about omens. What he did know was that his cup was now empty, and decisive steps needed to be undertaken to remedy this appalling state of affairs.

Humming to himself, he set out for the beer casks.

* * *

There was too much sound and too much colour here. Aerin left the ritual field and circled around the village, through the narrow paths in the ferns, heading towards the nearby lake. There was a place by the shore which was difficult to get to, enclosed by rocks and ancient spruce trees. Nobody ever walked there, except for him.

The lake was completely still and vast and filled with stars like a second sky below him, the opposite shore just a thin band of darkness two miles off. He settled comfortably in the fragrance of the soft needles and let the serenity of this double sky empty his head. The drums were barely audible in the distance; the only near sounds were an occasional call of an owl or a rustling of a mouse in the undergrowth. He stayed unmoving for a while in this private world of his, surrounded by the mellow night.

But his peace could not last for long. The image of Foy throwing her arms around Bovo’s muscular body seeped back into his head. They were together somewhere in the bushes right now, laughing and kissing and fucking, while he was sitting here, horny and alone.

Leapfrog was right, of course, that asshole. He should have talked to her sooner. But he knew he was about to get his spurs, and not a lot of people earned those at their age already, and he imagined he’d look very cool casually showing them to her like it was no big deal, and—

He’d worked pretty hard those past few months to get them, too. He brought them up to his eyes and twirled them in his fingers. They were simple, iron bands with short, blunt, curved blades. They didn’t seem as impressive as they had earlier that day, when Uradech presented them to him. Some warrior initiates already had the next level, the silver ones. And who cares, anyway, nobody is actually impressed until you earn the gilded ones, become a proper Kontarian master horse rider…

He had had high hopes for Foy. She was very cute whenever she smiled at him, those large dark eyes lighting up.

They’d fooled around once, after the spring festival, at the lake shore not far from here. But Kontarians, to the shock of their more respectable neighbours, were pretty relaxed about this sort of thing. Foy certainly was. She enjoyed boys’ bodies, and they enjoyed hers – that one time probably wasn’t that special to her. Bovo was special to her, giggling gossip had it even before tonight.

Was there anything special about Aerin? He wasn’t sure if he had anything to offer anyone other than good intentions and a toothy smile. If he at least was built like Bovo. That seemed to do the trick. Hold on.

He moved on to the water’s edge, threw off his shirt, and examined his reflection.

He was slimmer than the initiates, that’s for sure. Still, he wasn’t a total write-off. He grew tall and was a good rider and the initiates had had two more years to work out anyway, hadn’t they?

A slight breeze picked up, carrying with it a salty freshness from the distant sea, disturbing the water’s surface, touching his naked skin. He remembered the spring festival – a cool day, weak sunrays falling in through still leafless trees, making luminous his body and hers. Yes. He could not have her now, but he could still remember.

Listening closely if nobody was approaching, he stripped naked, his cock semi-erect as it popped out of his trousers. He entwined it with his fingers, and felt it harden, beat by beat. He lay down in the fine wet sand and looked to the stars. His memory took him back, retold to him every detail. It went like this:

Late March, late afternoon. Festive music reaching from inside the long hall in the village, music and the sounds of boots slamming on the board floor. A circle of friends gathered by its corner outside, nursing clay cups filled with wine. People drifting away. By chance, at some point, only Aerin and Foy remaining there, just talking, sitting on a bench under the long eaves.

She was wearing a thick grey woollen coat, and her hair, though brown, glowed in the sun.

“I’m just waiting for them to sing the Song of Spring at sunset,” she said. “It’s my favourite.”

Aerin enthusiastically agreed, even though he had no strong opinion on the Song of Spring. He enthusiastically agreed with a great many things that afternoon, things he couldn’t recall now. He could recall the end of their conversation though, and very, very well.

He’d apparently succeeded at saying something funny, because she was laughing, a warm short chuckle that lit up those large eyes, eyes like dark honey.

She calmed herself and pushed the corners of her mouth forward, and looked at him attentively.

“You have a pretty smile,” she said. “I always had a thing for large teeth.”

This caused said teeth to be exposed in a sheepish grin. She squinted a little, then wapped at his shoulder with the back of her hand.

“I bet you have a pretty cock, too,” she said.

His brain went into a crisis mode, and his face probably generated enough heat to bring about the spring all by itself. Foy leaned back, never taking her eyes off him. Her lips were drawn tight in a stifled laughter, but her expression was casual, her body relaxed. She was unfazed by the turn she gave to the conversation, and she clearly didn’t expect him to be either – well, not too much.

Alright, shit. She’s waiting for some reply. Come on, think of something clever!

“Well… I dunno? I mean, I like it myself.” Okay. Okay. A solid four out of ten response. I’m handling this. We’re good. We’re good.

She laughed, or rather, exhaled forcefully through her nose. “Show me,” she said.

Now he made an uncontrolled and sudden movement, throwing his whole upper body to look out to the dirt path, where dozens of festive-minded people were milling around the wooden houses.

“What,” he hissed, turning back to her, “here?!”

“No, silly,” she said, standing up. She did that backhanded wap to his shoulder again. “Let’s go to the lake, we’ll have some privacy there.”

He’d worried if he’d be able to keep up his erection in the chill, but he needn’t have. Foy’s naked body leaning against his awakened his blood, sent it rushing, swelling up, hot and heedless.

They lay down in the sand by the water, he on his back, she on her side, one of her arms reaching behind his neck, hand on his shoulder, her left leg entwined with his right by the knees. Her hair tickled his neck. Her breast rested unrestrained, soft and free, against his chest. Her face was so close, the faint tiny scar on her upper lip, every freckle on the bridge of her nose, and her eyes, looking into him, looking with – what? – a playful curiosity of sorts, an ardent focus.

Her hand was warm on his shaft, and the contrast with cool March air made it feel warmer still. She gripped him, gripped hard, then released; gently, carefully, her fingers brushed up to the head, and tapped the tip.

“See, I was right,” she said in a low voice. “You do have a pretty cock.” No response, clever or otherwise, occurred to him.

She bit her wine-stained lip and stroked him. “Good job, by the way, getting so hard out in the cold.” She pressed down with her fingertips again, enjoying his sure stiffness. He let out an uneven sigh.

“You’re… making it easy,” he said. His hand went around her back and rested on her ribs. He felt her muscles shift with every slow, relishing stroke she was giving him. He reached for her breast, felt it, played with it. She smiled and inclined to him, to give him a better access. Her fingers slipped on his precum.

With his other hand he went for her pubic mound, passed by her hair, and brushed against her clit, to her approving murmur. His angle was awkward now, their outreached hands crossed and her forearm bumping into his every time her palm went down his cock, body weights resting on unexpected parts, the whole situation hopelessly entangled and jumbled. She laughed and nuzzled his face. They were having a lot of fun.

Limbs shifted, bodies moved, equilibriums were lost and found. She ended up sitting up on his thighs, never once having lost her grip on his cock. Her other hand could now range free over his abs and his chest. It swept all over his cold skin, rough with goosebumps. He moaned when she skimmed by his nipple.

“Oh, you enjoyed that, didn’t you?” He flinched and put his hands on her exposed sides. She leaned down, eyes close, piercing. “You have such a nice voice. I want to hear you moan more.” Her words were hot on his lips. Her fingers circled his nipple, teased it, brushed away and came back. He felt self-conscious hearing himself moan; it was like hearing yourself sing, suddenly aware of your own voice; but he had no choice, as pleasure grabbed him by the throat.

She was going faster now, faster, completely lost in the moment.

“That’s right,” she said. “Go louder, let’s see if you’ll echo off the opposite shore.”

He gave a stifled laugh and squeezed at her ribcage. “Do you ever shut up?” He was really, really close.

She laughed in response. “You’re so rude!” Hair fell over her face. He felt a thrilling tingling inside, something coming undone, opening up.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasped, the ‘f’ chafing on his dry lips.

“See? You’re a very rude boy and—” he was weightless—“a bad influence on me!”

He came hard, holding her tight, warm sperm spattering both their skins. She gave him one last squeeze, released him, and giggled melodiously. “What, that was what made you come? You lowkey reprobate.” She gave him a peck on the lips, and stood up, smiling wide in the yellow light.

“Shit,” she said, “it’s almost sunset. Come on Aerin, let’s head back!”

He lifted himself up on his elbows. “Already? I haven’t gotten you off yet.”

She was already by the water, cleaning herself up. She gave him a cheerful look. “Another time. Don’t want to miss the Song. Don’t worry, I had my fun.” She put on her clothes and readjusted her hair. “Okay, catch up!”

She'd been here – she was gone.

Back in the present, Aerin lay still, on his back and splotched with his seed as then, but a lot more alone. He let his slackening wet cock topple onto his lap.

She never meant to lead him on. She only meant to please herself and him, however...

To Aerin, Foy was all that. To Foy, Aerin wasn't. The hazards of human interaction.

After the spring festival, whenever they ran into each other, Foy was her much unchanged, smiling self. Aerin made himself act casual too. He meant to bring up that 'another time,' but the opportunity was never quite right.

Shouldn't have been such chickenshit, a voice in his mind said.

Well, another voice replied, wouldn't want to ruin their relationship by appearing obsessed. Besides, I didn't just want sex with her. I wanted... I wanted to be her favourite person. And what did I have to offer her that other guys didn't?

Those are excuses, and you know that, the first voice returned.

Oh, that's very useful. Where was this rationality when it was needed?

Here, all the time. You just chose not to listen, 'cause you're chickenshit.

Fuck you!

What? No, you fuck you!

With a sudden jerking movement, Aerin stood up. He walked ankle-deep into the lake, splashed water into his face, and with hands still pressed to his eyes he laughed to himself.

You know what Foy, good for you. You dodged a complete basket case.

He took a few more steps forward and dived. Cold water closed over him, and an exhilarating rush surged through his head. He swam out some distance from the shore and then turned to his back and just floated, unmoving, suspended in the black.

Rinsed by his orgasm, chilled by the lake, he was astonished at how light and carefree he suddenly felt. Just a minute before he was having an argument with himself on how much of a fuckup he was, but now… Starshine was all around him, and he was young, and in this spring night air he sensed a million possible futures which lay open for him to claim.

It's all gonna be alright. The sagas were full of hapless guys who ended up awing the world, after all. He was nothing special now, but he'll change. He'll improve himself in every way he can. He will be special, and he'll achieve great things. Just you wait. Just you wait!

Farewell to Foy. It was never meant to be. It's alright. He'll prove himself before everyone, and he'll prove to himself that he's worthy of affection.

A faint thought suggested that this sounded an awful lot like his previous reasoning about the iron spurs, but it appeared just for a moment, and then was gone, like a shooting star.

Lazy currents caressed his skin, and he grinned at the sky. How he'll prove himself was unclear now, but something will turn up. Some great, momentous occasion for him to seize. He was sure of it.


	2. Strange Tidings

As Aerin floated, Leapfrog lurched, navigating among the people seated on the grass. He was at the exactly optimal level of drunkenness, hyper-aware of the music, and at peace with everyone and everything. If he went about it scientifically, he could maintain this level indefinitely, stoking it with just the right dosage of oat beer at just the right time. Unfortunately, he was several cups beyond exact science.

He wandered the field, bumping into more or less distant friends from time to time and exchanging a few words, but then disengaging and resuming on his way like an errant nomad. He was in a mood to watch people, listen to the sounds, breathe in the smoke. He stopped by some high grass and looked around. Twinkling eyes and teeth bared in smiles surrounded him, half-obscured by the smoke; he picked up notes of a familiar song coming in from somewhere. He liked that song. The course of action that appeared proper to him was therefore to inhale heavily and start belting it out at the top of his voice.

“Mistletrush! Mistle… trush! Lay me down in tha unnerbrush! My naked feet grow weeeaaaaarrryyy wi’tha dusk!!!”

A voice of someone crouching unseen in the high grass implored him to shut the fuck up.

“Wat? Oh. Oh, hi Modi,” Leapfrog said recognizing his critic, a fellow scout a year older than himself and Aerin.

“Ssh! Be quiet,” said Modi, motioning at Leapfrog to crouch down with him.

“Wazza matter?”

“I told you to shut up,” Modi whispered urgently. Leapfrog scanned for what was it that Modi was looking at and realized that they were by the fire around which the village elders sat.

“Ye spyin’ on th’eldurs?” said Leapfrog, focusing hard on being quiet.

“I’m not spying, I’m just listening.”

“Why’s evvyone spyin’ on people tuhnight?”

“What?”

 “Uh. What d’ya want to hear?”

“The fuck you think? Tonight’s initiation was supposed to be next month, but they pushed it back at a moment’s notice. The blacksmiths have been hammering away for days now, making arrowheads. Messengers show up every day at the Copper Hall, and the elders walk around all tense and nervy like.”

Leapfrog processed the information. “Are we boutta get attacked?”

“I think they think so.”

“By Harmen?”

“No genius, by the Assfaced People of Buttland. Of course by Harmen.”

Leapfrog had to concede that this wasn’t a very good question. The Kingdom of Harmen was the only neighbour of Kontaria which possessed enough military might to mount an offensive against anyone.

“Whadda they want from us? We’re only a buncha lakes and forests neways!”

“I don’t know, tribute or horses or they want to take away all our men for their armies. We used to fight about stuff like that all the time.”

“Well then, they’ll come an’ get los’ in the fores’ an’ go home as usual.”

Modi looked at him. “I heard it’s Titulus that’s coming.”

Leapfrog immediately felt more sober.

Kontaria lay far off from where General Titulus had waged his campaigns over the past two decades, but his reputation spread far and wide. A whole catalogue of overheard stories flashed through the murk of Leapfrog’s mind; reports of famous victories and the man’s skill and bravery, but also of dread, of villages, towns, whole provinces, burned and put to sword, of neat rows of people hanging along miles of road.

The last notes of the song echoed through the night and died away. Some people clapped. Modi got up.

“The elders aren’t talking, they’re just sitting and staring. No use wasting a festival like this. Come on Leapfrog, lead me to beer.”

Leapfrog snapped out of his thoughts upon hearing such an excellent idea. He fulfilled the request with exemplary efficiency and then they found pipers and singers specializing in a bawdier kind of poetry and when Leapfrog woke up the next day under a bush he wasn’t exactly sure how had the night concluded.

* * *

The Capital. City lights twinkling all throughout the night, torches ever burning. Two hundred thousand people huddled together round the bend of a mighty river.

People packed dense in their half-timbered houses, labourers and merchants and craftsmen stacked from cellars to rafters, swarming during daytime in the narrow streets which with spring rain turn to mud. Passing carts splatter it all over the bleak houses, over their walls, their windows and their dwellers, the latter in exchange yelling obscenities at the drivers and their soil-encrusted horses.

Across the river a gentle hill rises and there the roads are paved among the stone houses and the elder bushes, and as you go higher the air grows breezier and the residences grander and life lighter. On top of the hill is the Royal Castle, and in this castle there is a resplendent hall, and in this hall there is a throne, and from this throne, the King of Harmen is watching over you.

Harmen is a respectable kingdom. Harmen is an honourable kingdom. The might of Harmen is founded on a strict moral code, informed by the religion and the love for the country, which all the King's good subjects follow. Transgression will not be tolerated. Everybody abides by the rules, and the rules are good for everybody. The King is watching. Should anyone decide to behave improperly, the King shall act swiftly to correct them, before they can corrupt the innocent. This is the King’s holy duty, which he exercises through his obedient servants. The correction may sometimes be painful, but that's just a sign of an effective treatment. So it is. So it should be.

And yet, strangely, this capital city, this heart of the sullen inland kingdom, is a place where you can live. Right under the King’s watchful eye, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. By day, you respect the grave values of your ancestors, the values of civilization, the ones that set you apart from those dirty lax foreigners. But by night you breathe, unseen in dim candlelight, you dance and drink and are stupid, and follow the other code.

The secret of every respectable country: there are two codes. One official, written and talked about, to abide by. Another, never mentioned and never learned, but felt, perceived subconsciously, a gentler code, a livable code: a code which tells you which rules can be ignored and when. Everyone, on some level, has the two coexist in their heart. Everyone, on some level, accepts this. Of course that doesn't mean that there isn't a danger to ignoring the official rules. Perhaps it’s more prudent to just always follow the righteous path. But then again, aren’t cliffside paths always more panoramic?

Don’t get too close to the edge though. You might fall an awful long way down.

There was a large, open corridor in the Royal Castle, basking in torchlight, with colonnades on both sides: one opening to a view over the city and the bright river below, the opposite to a garden in an inner courtyard, dark and quiet in the mild spring night. Over the corridor's yellowish tiles a man was strutting confidently, his bright blue cape fluttering behind him, a smile amid his slightly greying beard, his mind relieved and unburdened.

"Lord Cyril!"

Startled momentarily, the man stopped and pivoted on one heel to see who called to him; he smiled even wider when he recognized the woman, in a simple taupe courtly dress, standing at the end of the corridor.

"Lady Tessa! What a surprise!"

She returned his smile, in her calm, reserved way, and let him trot back to her. She was some fifteen years older than he was, over sixty by now, and yet her former great beauty has not quite completely abandoned her. It's her eyes, Cyril thought, as he reached out to kiss her silver rings in greeting. Even in her aged face, under the sagging eyelids, the pale green irises were hypnotic.

"So you finally honour the capital with your presence! I was beginning to worry you grew completely wild, hunting all year on your estate." Her voice was even, low, measured.

"I'm human yet! I think. But not much of a city dweller."

The lady nodded, and they started strolling down the corridor. He was a lot taller than she was, and he had to make small slow steps, heel-first, hands folded over his belt buckle, to match her pace.

"You've come here to see the Prince, I reckon?" she asked.

Cyril cringed, and tugged at the three heraldic crows emblazoned on his coat. "Everyone knows, do they?"

There was a faint and quizzical smile on Tessa's face. "Quite everyone. Your son has caused some spectacle.”

“Oh dear. Well, what can I say. Alex is not a very smart boy.”

“I wonder who did he take after.”

“Ha, haa. Anyway, it’s over now.”

“You’ve talked with the Prince?”

“I have. Even the King weighed in, though of course officially he knows nothing of this whole business.”

“My.”

“Yes. Well, I’ve smoothed things over, no feuds will arise from this.”

“And Alex?”

“Oh, he got a stern reprimand. He’ll conduct himself better in the future.”

 “And the girl?”

There was a small pause.

“Well, it’s been decided she needs better role models, and perhaps a quieter environment. She’ll be sent to live in Behem, with Lady Paula, at least for the time being.”

Lady Tessa stopped abruptly. “Oof!” She raised her eyebrows and chuckled. “That poor girl! Have mercy on her and just throw her into a dungeon instead!”

Cyril twirled his beard and looked around. The only other person in sight was a guard at the other end of the hallway, halberd twinkling in torchlight, a bit too far to overhear them perhaps.

“I won’t be heard speaking ill of Lady Paula. Not in this castle,” he said.

“No need.” Tessa’s green eyes met his, a searching and curious look now. “Whatever our opinion on her ladyship, though, you must admit that Alex got off a lot lighter. Why did the Prince’s daughter take the fall? What did the Prince say to that?”

“Oh, the Prince seems very glad to be rid of her. He’s got spares, anyway.” Cyril tugged at his crows again. “And, well, that’s the thing. She’s a princess. She’s got royal blood. If she dishonours herself, she dishonours the entire royal family.”

“Diluted royal blood, and very extended family. The Prince and the King are, what, fifth cousins?” Tessa looked up and started counting on her fingers, but gave up and waved her hand. “Please, Cyril. The Prince is not more important than you or me.”

“Blood’s blood. Appearances have to be kept, especially now, when trying times are ahead.”

Tessa gave him that look again. Light twinkled in her eyes and though her face was set, some deeper shadows in her wrinkles seemed to suggest that she was very amused. “It’s strange though, isn’t it, how girls usually end up the worse in these situations.”

Cyril smiled a lopsided smile and looked to the ceiling. “Well, you’ve got a point. Being born a girl was the first of the many bad decisions she’s made.”

Tessa’s gaze was unwavering. “Yes. What was she thinking. Some people have no sense at all.”

“None.”

They stood there for a moment still; then Tessa resumed the walk.

“But it is too bad. I’ve met the girl many times. I like her a lot. A very bright young lady.”

“If you like her that much, you can appeal for her sake before the Prince. Or the King.”

She looked straight ahead, and for a shortest moment her body slackened and her expression hardened. “No. Not that much.”

“Frankly, everyone else seems to think that she’s a spoiled brat.”

Now the lady smiled. “As are all our children, and as were we, and as were our parents before us. Nobility obligates, Lord Cyril!”

“You keep saying dangerous things tonight, Lady Tessa! But!” he abruptly stopped and held her by the elbow, “speaking of dangerous, I’m taking leave of the King earlier today and who do I see walking into the throne room after me? General Titulus and that old…” he stopped himself, looked around thoroughly, leaned in closer to Tessa and continued at a whisper, “…that old bastard, Oren!”

Tessa kept smiling. “That doesn’t surprise me. The King wants them to co-operate on a project together.”

“Titulus and Oren? Together?”

“Why not?” If she’d been amused before, she was downright fighting back laughter now. “They are both devoted subjects of the King, and can rise over their personal grudges. Especially Oren. You know him, he’s very nice. Positively cuddly nowadays, I’d say.”

Cyril snorted. His list of things he’d cuddle with sooner than with His Serene Highness Duke Oren of Haratraz was vast and included items such as wasp nests, thorn bushes on fire, and particularly irritable bears. “So what’s this common project?”

“You know Kontaria?”

“Kontaria?” Cyril browsed his memory on Harmen’s small neighbour. “Excellent horses. Excellent horsemen. Everyone knows that. Besides that, not much. It’s just a lot of forests and lakes by the north-eastern sea, isn’t it? Oh, and I’ve heard they know how to party.”

That’s funny. Tessa’d heard that somewhere, too.


	3. Eagle

The Copper Hall was by far the grandest building in the village, constructed with great thick logs and topped, true to its name, with a fanciful steep roof of scaly copper tiles. Equally impressive as the hall was the carved wooden idol of the god of the forest in front of the entrance, overlooking the swath of flat beaten ground that served as the village’s main square and marketplace.

The inside of the hall could easily fit over a hundred people. Right now it only needed to fit about twenty scouts, selected among those right before the initiation age. They sat on the floor, around a village elder on a dais, in the morning light that was falling in beams through the windows way above. There was at the moment no furniture; there were only the walls, decorated with shields, weapons, and ritual flags. A single old standard hung peacefully from the ceiling right over the elder’s head.

The elder wasn’t actually that old, his black hair only beginning to grey. But he was a legendary warrior. Great, gnarly Brecca. Why did he gather them today in the hall was not clear, but Aerin, seated near the back, was tense with anticipation. Were the rumours true? Ever since last week’s festival Leapfrog wouldn’t shut up that he had inside information about an upcoming invasion.

“We’re going to war,” Brecca said. Aerin clenched his fists. “We got a letter from the King of Harmen himself, a demand to furnish two thousand horsemen to send them in aid in their war effort against the Kingdom of Redona. This we couldn’t spare even if we wanted to, as they well know. This is just a ploy, they’ll use our refusal as an excuse to attack us, take away prisoners, settle our men as peasants tilling their fields, take our women to bear them children, to take our horses – the only valuable thing we have. This had happened before, and this is happening again.”

Someone from the hall shouted out: “What, they already forgot how you kicked their ass? They want another round?”

Light flickered in Brecca’s eyes, eyes of a man trying hard not to smile. “It was a closely fought battle, and we got lucky. I would not in fact describe myself as having, as you put it, kicked their ass.”

“Well, you got their Eagle.”

Twenty pairs of eyes shot up to the standard hanging from the ceiling. Its colours, purple and white and gold, were slightly faded now, but the emblazoned royal Eagle still watched them angrily with its wings outstretched. This was one of the great standards that only Harmen’s royalty and appointed generals were allowed to carry to war. Losing one was a great dishonour.

Brecca could not resist a brief smile now.

“Yes, well, I got their Eagle. Or rather they gifted it to me, by walking their army right into our forest where it could be ambushed.”

“They said you fought their general hand to hand!” An excitable chatter was rising.

“His bodyguard, to be precise. We later ransomed the general, but we’ve kept the Eagle. This, however, was sixteen years ago, and while the memory of that defeat has kept them at bay for a while – time goes on. They are moving against us again, and the man who’s leading them is Titulus.”

This silenced the audience. The concept of war alone was to them fairly abstract, and mostly recalled the din and flair of the heroic sagas. The name of Titulus, concrete and infamous, brought altogether less exciting associations.

In the hush, Brecca continued. “Titulus has moved from Harmen heartland with an army of several thousand, our friends in the Kingdom claim. He’ll descend from the hills and be here in a matter of weeks. You understand now that this is no game, I can see that. Titulus and his veteran soldiers move in silence, and if we’re to have a chance against him we need all our eyes constantly watching over Kontaria. Your eyes, too.”

He set out their task for the coming weeks. They’d mostly continue their regular jobs, but at appointed times they’d serve as night scouts, keeping an eye on the roads leading up to Kontaria from Harmen. Brecca expected that Harmeni spies would precede their armies, and those could not be allowed to penetrate into the forest. Kontaria’s hope in the war was stealth, deception and surprise on their home turf; if those advantages were to be lost, Titulus’s hardened invaders would dispatch the Kontarian warbands easily. All the initiated warriors were, of course, called up to protect the forests – there would be a couple thousand of them, all excellent horsemen – but they could not hope to best fully armoured knights in open combat.

Aerin was deep in thought when they left the Copper Hall half an hour later. He clearly needed to be more careful with what he wished for. But then again, this was it. This was a moment to for bright young men to shine.

Just remember the sagas. Just imagine the glory to be won.

He was brought back to the present by Leapfrog slapping him on the back of his neck.

“Situational awareness, Aerin!”

“Ow! Fuck off,” he replied, jabbing Leapfrog under his ribs.

They both lived a little way off the main of the village, and their path led them among fields and pastures, green and fresh in late spring, past post-and-rail wooden fences and sacred ancient trees. It was a bright morning, and the sunshine was warm on Aerin’s skin. A girl with a back basket of forage smiled at him as they walked past her, which he comprehensively failed to notice.

 “So you were actually right, huh?” Aerin said. “About the war.”

“Yeah, told you, who has the best intelligence? Leapfrog the ace! Titulus can sneak around all he wants, he’s not getting past me neither!”

Aerin laughed. “’Best intelligence’ would be the last phrase I’d choose to describe you, Leapfrog.”

“Oi how rude! I bet you wouldn’t notice a spy if he walked right up to you and kicked you in the dick.”

“I’ll catch every spy that comes our way while you’ll catch a cold and finally die.”

Leapfrog leered at him. “Ah yes, because you’re the toughest fighter we have now. You’ve been training all evenings for a whole week now, after all!”

Aerin hesitated. He had, indeed, been spending his free time doing weight training at the longhouse or taking long swims in the lake. “Yeah, well, I figured I could use some more practice, what with the rumours of the war and all. Turns out I was right, too!”

“Oh word? And it’s not because you’d like to become a beefcake dreamboat like Bovo and pick up all the prettiest girls?”

Aerin cleared his throat. That was the problem with Leapfrog – he wasn’t actually the complete moron that he appeared to be.

“Shut up Leapfrog, you’re a complete moron.”

“I kid, I kid. Your long career as a helping hand in the fields has equipped you with many valuable combat skills. For example, if you ever need to save someone’s life by quickly building a scarecrow, you’re gonna be a hero!”

“First, you’re just jealous of my scarecrows, which are positively world class, and second, I’m now a helping hand at the horse pasture and not at the fields and I’ll outride you any day. And third, fuck off.”

“Alright then!” Leapfrog said, as they reached a crossroads. “I shall proceed to fuck off. See you tomorrow, horse expert.”

“You’re not gonna be by the grove tonight? There’s gonna be a ball game and then we’ll get shitfaced.”

“Nah, I’m gonna visit my old folks today, I reckon.”

“Since when are you a family man? Out of literally all people?”

Leapfrog leaned on a pinewood bar of the pasture fence.

“Yeeah. I mean, this village of ours is the largest and closest to the border out of our whole fine federation of Kontaria. It might well get proper fucked come the war. I think it’s a decent time to go be with the folks today, when the news breaks.”

Aerin walked the rest of the way to his place slowly. What Leapfrog had said was right, and he felt a little shitty for not considering this. Like most Kontarians, he’d left the household of his parents in his early teens to be apprenticed – but with how small the villages were, he was never further than two miles from his family home.

It’s been a while since he’d visited his parents. Perhaps he should, after he was done with the horses that day. They would have heard the news by now, and they knew that he was of age to be tasked with scouting, and even though it was not yet a real warrior call-up his mum would still be probably worried sick about her only son. So would be the old man, though he’d take care not to show it.

Yeah, he thought. I reckon I’ll go see them today.


	4. Silence

In practice, scouting Kontarian roads mostly consisted in sitting in trees all night long.

On days when their watch was assigned, as sunset was nearing the night scouts would ride out in pairs for several miles west, towards Harmen, leave their horses at designated spots, and walk the remaining distance towards their outpost trees. The outpost trees were for the most part large oaks or beeches, selected for their thick boughs and ample foliage; you could climb onto them and remain unseen and relatively comfortable, with a good view over the road, until dawn – which fortunately was just several hours away now that the summer was coming.

You had to be careful not to lose your way, though. In wartime, Kontarians would dig out shallow-rooted shrubs and re-plant them at crossroads, obscuring paths, changing them constantly, leading enemies astray. If you played this right, you could keep the invaders away from your villages, going in circles for weeks. This was the oldest trick on the runestone, and if you fell for it and took a wrong turn when sleepily going back from your watch, Leapfrog would make fun of you forever.

Days passed and Aerin, to his disappointment but also some latent relief, found his life not much changed. He’d attend to the horses, very sleepy on the afternoons after his scouting duty, he’d talk with the same people, dream the same dreams. Only the mood in the village was now different. There was a background restlessness, an anxiety about the events to come. Even if they were trying to appear upbeat, the Kontarians anticipated any news with fear. All eyes, Aerin knew, were on Behem.

See the large map which they keep at the Copper Hall. Here is the dark dotted line indicating where the forests of Kontaria end, and to its left is the emptiness of the borderlands, until suddenly a strong black and almost straight line cleaves the parchment vertically, from the Free City of Ys in the north down to about the latitude of the southern border of Kontaria. These are the Blue Cliffs, going for twenty inches on the map, or a hundred miles in real life, and unless you are planning to invade with an army of mountain goats you are not getting through them.

So you must go around. Not from the north, though – the cliffs end in a dense forest there, beyond which lies Ys, and those guys will not let you march an army through their land. If you’re invading Kontaria from Harmen, you have to go from the south.

There is a road there. The same road, in fact, whose small part Aerin walked every day, as both the pasture and the village lay on it. As you left the village and went west, after some day and a half’s ride you’d leave the low-lying forests and lakes of Kontaria, and the land would start inclining upwards, towards the steep hills and the low mountains that were the border of Harmen. Past those, beyond the chain of frontier fortresses a farmland opened, and in that farmland, on a river, was a town and a castle that overlooked it. This was the nearest major Harmeni settlement – some seventy miles away. This was Behem.

Aerin had heard about it from many travelling merchants and venturing Kontarians that went there on various business; a place with thousands of people living together, beneath a vast structure of stone, was a thing always he found difficult to picture. No travelling merchants were coming now. The Kingdom of Harmen had closed off any traffic going to Kontaria, to prevent any intelligence from getting out.

Kontaria, of course, still had scouts – real warrior-scouts – who’d ride into Harmen, sneaking past the border forts, to glean any enemy movements in advance. It was their reports that everyone was awaiting.

“After all this waiting the actual attack will be a relief,” Aerin complained one evening, as he and Leapfrog were riding towards their outpost. “Everyone’s on edge.”

“Takes a while to march an army all the way here I guess.”

“Modi was at the market square today telling everyone it’ll be any day now.”

“Modi doesn’t know shit, though.”

Aerin shifted in his saddle. The forest trail laboured up towards a hill top. “Doesn’t he? Why do they call him Modi the Oracle, then?”

Leapfrog smiled. “’Cause a few years back they pulled a prank on him and spiked his breakfast with ground wickwort.”

“What? Why have I never heard that? What happened then?”

“What do you think? He spent the entire day sitting still on a log, thinking that elves were talking to him and telling everyone their future, and then spent the entire following day throwing up and shitting himself, both at once.”

Aerin laughed. Classic. Some people only learn the taste and the smell of wickwort the hard way.

They reached the hilltop where a view opened over the dense forests and the many lakes scattered all around them in the sunset. It was a pleasant, long, early summer evening. All his life, Aerin was used to spending those around the people he knew – the pranksters, the ball-game shit-talkers, the ale connoisseurs, the more and less skilled but always bragging lovers. They’ve always been told, by the older people who remembered, that their reasonably carefree existence was never really secure. They all had their training, in scouting, in fighting, and they always knew that a day may come they’d have to use these skills – but after such long peace, knowing and believing are two different things.

Days were coming when their lives would depend on that training. Aerin hoped everyone actually knew what they were doing.


	5. On a Dark Night

It was an evening about two weeks after Brecca’s talk – a wet and noisy evening, rain showers having passed by that day, drenching the forest and disturbing the lake – that the news finally broke. A scout came galloping to the Copper Hall, and the people, even before they were called, all gathered on the square before the carved god. An elder, leaning on a gnarled rod, eyes black in the dusk, addressed them a short while later with the inevitable intelligence. An army, several thousand strong, had left Behem the day before, heading towards Kontaria. They’d be here in a week, tops.

Messengers were dispatched to the villages and every warrior was called to the warband at once. Every household had any precious movables packed and ready to flee if need be, deep into the woods where caches of food had been hidden.

The warband gathered at the ritual field gradually over the next few days. Two thousand men and two thousand horses, painted with four thousand sets of runes, different depending on the village but all believed to grant protection of Kontaria’s ancient gods and spirits and demons. Aerin walked around the field and listened to the songs and laughter of this shimmering crowd. They seemed largely unfazed by the danger ahead. Maybe it was the presence of warriors like Brecca who still remembered the famous victory from sixteen years before. More than death, he thought, the men expected glory.

It was late in the afternoon. Aerin left the field and headed towards the village. He had scouting duty that night with Leapfrog, and those were crucially important now.

Walking into the woods between the field and the village and lost in thoughts, Aerin almost walked into a young warrior from another village and a local girl he only knew by sight, having sex under an old tree; he was standing up and her back was pressed against the bark, her limbs entwined tight around his thighs.

“Do you mind, mate?” the warrior said to Aerin. The girl giggled and hid her face in his chest.

“Yeah, sorry,” said Aerin and turned back to take a different path. Damnit, this was going on all around the place ever since the warband gathered – Kontarians were a people that would use even the most serious of excuses to get together and fuck someone on the side. Was he the only one not getting any?

It was then that he heard the horn. Two rising and falling tones from the field – an urgent call to gather. There was at once a great commotion as everyone scrambled towards the signal. The young warrior passed him, cursing, trying to shove stiff wet cock into his trousers. The girl ran after him even to the open field, not caring to cover her naked body, and shouted after him.

“Take care after yourself! And come back, I’m not done with you!”

The warrior turned and blew her a kiss, then stumbled back towards the middle of the field. She smiled and returned to the forest. Some body paint rubbed off him onto her, and her pretty chest was stamped with faint blue mirrored runes.

The chieftains were giving some instructions somewhere in the swarming band, and with a surprising quickness it organized itself into shape – the warriors grabbed their weapons, mounted their horses, and found their groups. This was, in fact, what Kontarian warriors spent a lot of time drilling – not weapons training, but moving as one, a perfect co-ordination with the entire warband. Aerin watched them with poorly disguised awe, but as the sun’s yellowing rays hit him from low above the treeline he remembered his scouting duty. Reluctantly, he turned and jogged towards the village.

At the longhouse he was awaited by Uradech, the old warrior in charge of the scouts, and Leapfrog.

“The warband’s leaving!” he announced, barging inside.

“Yeah, Aerin, you genius,” said Leapfrog. “You’re attempting to bring information to the master of scouts.” The ancient man smiled calmly under his sloping white moustache. “You took your time by the way, everyone’s already been dispatched!”

Aerin ignored Leapfrog and turned to Uradech.

“Some five thousand Harmeni infantry are, right at this moment, attempting to pull themselves and their carts out of Turf Moor,” Uradech said, in his deep rich voice. If he wasn’t the master of scouts, he would have made a great bard. “The recent rainfalls have given us our enemy impeded, and we intend to push this advantage tonight.”

Aerin could see it in his mind. Rivers of Kontarian horsemen riding single files silent through the night, descending upon the incapacitated foe, routing them back to their place. He tapped his knuckles together.

“Damn, to be there tonight!”

Uradech lifted his pale eyes. “You have an equally important task before you. Look at me and listen close. When the invaders were leaving Behem, our outriders reported several hundred mounted knights. Today, we hear only of infantry at Turf Moor and barely any horses. Means that we have a whole lot of heavy cavalry separated from the rest of the army, doing who knows what.”

“They could be hiding somewhere and waiting to hit us at the back!”

“Exactly. That’s why we need all our scouts on their positions tonight. Kontaria is an unforgiving homeland, I’m afraid, relying even on its youth with such vital tasks. But alas, we’re outmanned.”

With these words, he put on his cloak and ushered them out. “I’ll be near the army, at the red tree by the Green Pond. If our army is pushed back, I’ll be circling back towards the village along the stream. Your place tonight is Six Pines. Don’t leave until I send for you. May the spirits watch over us all.”

* * *

Light drizzle kept murmuring in the dead of night. Aerin pulled the damp hood of his cloak deeper over his eyes and paced around nervously. Leapfrog sat pressed against a trunk of a pine tree, though it was no use seeking shelter there; the water had long before seeped through the upper branches and was now trickling down the bark in sustained trails.

“This is good for us,” said Leapfrog. “You can’t see or hear anything and their carts are axle-deep in mud. We can take ‘em.”

Aerin looked around. If he hadn’t known this area so well – the six huge pines that gave the place its name, the surrounding clearings, the road that led past – he would have had absolutely no sense of his surroundings. The clouds had blocked off the moon, and the rain was killing all sounds. Hope lifted his spirits – a Harmeni army, no matter how big, would die of fear alone if attacked in this night, a night that erased all senses.

At the same time, though… a new vision of his future appeared to him. “What were you doing on the night of that famous victory?” a child would ask him. “I was standing useless in the rain in the ass-end of the woods,” he’d respond. “It was an important job,” he’d insist.

He kept pacing, pacing around the pines. Leapfrog observed him with half-closed eyes but said nothing. Aerin would sometimes stop and listen, imagining he heard the din of the distant battle, but time and time again it was nothing – just millions of raindrops tapping on millions of leaves.

Past midnight the rain stopped and the skies cleared up a bit. The waning moon resurfaced from beyond the clouds, filling the forest with its pale fire. Aerin walked out to the road and looked ahead.

“If they waged a battle tonight, it’s over by now,” said Leapfrog quietly.

“Yeah.” Aerin threw off his hood and shook his head, water spraying off his hair.

“You’re kinda bitter that you missed it, no?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah, you’re daft. You’re looking for glory in battle like morons who get themselves killed.”

“Look, I just want to be involved, alright? How can I prove myself if I just—” he thought he heard a noise from somewhere in the trees and paused for a moment. Must have been a bird. “If I’m left behind to watch damp trees?” he finished, quieter than before.

Leapfrog stood up, stretched, and walked over to him. “Who do you want to prove yourself to? You don’t need to be the most legendary warrior in the history of Kontaria to make people like you, you know.”

Aerin groaned and turned away. Leapfrog was getting into his sermon mode. “Yeah, you think if everyone starts praising you you’ll stop being all insecure. Bullshit, you need to relax. We’re all insecure, we just get on with it. Go chat up some lass and get laid, they all think you’re cute.”

Aerin turned back to him and raised his hand. “Okay, first of all—”

In some distance, a horse neighed.

Aerin and Leapfrog stood completely still. Aerin’s hand was still risen, fingers pointed straight ahead, his mouth still open. They looked each other in the eyes and moved not a muscle for a long while.

Eventually, very slowly, they turned their heads. The sound had come from Aerin’s left, Leapfrog’s right, the west; they knew that there was a large clearing there, behind maybe three hundred feet of dense forest.

“Come on,” Leapfrog mouthed, and turned towards it.

They disappeared in the underbrush and moved forward carefully placing their weights on their feet, dancing around twigs and low branches and making no sound, like they were well trained to do. There was a large rock among the trees, poking out like an island from the thick bushes, and they stopped on the opposite sides of it. The ground sloped down ahead, offering them a view over the entire clearing.

And in the clearing, there they were.


	6. We Live and Die by Our Choices

Maybe two hundred men were sleeping on the wet ground, in concentric circles, bundled in heavy cloaks. Their weapons were laid next to them, except some long pikes stuck in the ground, Harmeni standards faintly waving on their ends. On the far side of the clearing, horses were tied to the trees, about as many as there were men.

Harmeni heavy cavalry. Nobody had heard them, not even the two scouts, under the cover of rain. They must have separated from the rest, and unable to find their way in the dark and the noise, decided to stop and – while there was nothing better to do – catch some rest. Sleep, Aerin thought. In the rain, deep in enemy territory, in full armour. Who the hell is even capable of that?

Not novices. Veteran soldiers experienced into indifference. Too experienced to sleep unguarded, no doubt. He crouched lower in the swaying, dripping leaves.

A soldier appeared out of the shadows surrounding the clearing, walked through his sleeping companions towards a vacant bit of ground right in the middle of the encampment, stretched out his arms by a large standard planted there, and continued on, eventually disappearing in the dark again.

“Aerin,” Leapfrog whispered from across the rock, “we gotta report that quick!”

“Hold on. I want to get a little closer.”

“What for you shithead?”

Aerin’s eyes were fixed on the standard in the middle. He realized something when the soldier was passing by. He had to make sure.

“I just want to check something. Be right back.”

He dived into the foliage and moved noiselessly towards the camp and away from Leapfrog’s angry hisses. After years of training his moves were careful yet decisive.

Right at the very edge of the clearing he crouched unseen in protective vegetation and fixed his stare on the standard, trying to discern if what he thought he saw was real. The pole it was on was twice as tall as a man easily, and must have been an absolute bitch to carry around and stick into the ground. Presently a light breeze rose and for a moment, just for a moment, the flag unfurled, purple and white and gold – a royal Eagle.

All his muscles tensed. An Eagle in such a small company and in an enemy land – unheard of! Its place was in the middle of a mighty host, announcing the far-reaching power of the King from a position of safety beyond layers and layers of steel. But an Eagle was always with a general. If a general was daring enough to venture forward with but a small riding party, his Eagle followed.

Titulus was here.

Aerin held tight onto a branch, the sensation of its bark digging into his skin his only anchor to the world around him as his mind span at full speed. He was a stone’s throw from the Eagle. There were guards around, sure, but most of them would be posted by the road. He licked his lips. His heart was racing. He saw what he could do. One silent, decisive move forward. One short slash of his knife against the rope. Aerin and an Eagle. Aerin, the young scout, with the Kingdom’s pride in his hand. Brecca’s glory. Glory everlasting.

But also – there was the moon’s sharp white shine. There were the guards out in the night, there were the soldiers in their light sleep. There was Titulus, the grim legend, one of these shapes on the ground. Death or mutilation.

And as these images flashed like lightning within his head, the light without grew dim. Aerin looked up. A cloud floated to the moon, a bulky black shape with brilliant lining. It was solid, heavy, and its progress was slow in the dying wind. It would take five minutes, give or take, for the moon to re-emerge.

Some mental calculation went on, beyond his consciousness. Some weight was thrown on some scales. A choice made.

He slinked out of the leaves and leaped across open field to a small bush and stopped. Just inches from him were the sleeping soldiers and he could hear them breathe evenly. He could hear a guard’s footfalls on the grass somewhere the other side of the camp. He knew that at least one more guard, the one who had stretched his arms, was close and unseen to his left.

He left the relative safety of the bush and crept forward, passing row after row of sleepers. By the innermost sleeping soldiers, he fell to the wet ground, eyes up. He could hear the Eagle’s rope tap against its flagpole. In some distance, a horse snorted indignantly.

The cloud was about midway through its progress across the moon. Only the white fields on the standards were visible now. He didn’t know where the nearer guard was – but if Aerin couldn’t see the guard, so too could the guard not see Aerin.

He made his final steps with his fingers glancing the ground He focused on his breathing, shallow on his lower teeth. He executed this perfectly – not a sound was made. He reached the flagpole and produced his knife. A horse – the same as before or some other – whinnied quietly. One of the guards making rounds around the camp coughed.

The rope was in fact a solid leather cord. He brought the knife to it and bit his lip breathless as the metal creaked quietly on leather. It wasn’t much of a noise, but it filled his world now, and he kept it low, kept it even, cutting slowly and meticulously: one full length of a knife cutting a quarter through the cord – the blade re-entering the notch at the base – one more slice to get halfway through – and repeat. He dropped his attention from anywhere but the cord. This was the only thing that mattered now.

Another cut, and the cord gave out with a small snap. The standard fell with a gentle furl and he grasped at it, and stood still. It was so soft to touch, like no cloth he had ever touched – he held it in his hands in silent disbelief…

Very loud, very close, a trumpet sounded. All at once the soldiers came alive, rising from the ground. Several horsemen rode into the clearing, bearing torches, bringing light.

Aerin, just for a moment, froze. A soldier was getting up from his place, just feet from him. His eyes glittered in the torchlight, unfocused at first, but then suddenly fixing at the boy with the standard.

“What the fuck,” the soldier said.

Aerin darted for the forest. He never had a chance.

Someone barged into him, heavy and clad in scale mail, and tackled him to the ground. Aerin kicked out, let go of the standard, and got up; someone else grabbed at him, twisting his arm behind his back. He still tried to free himself from the grip, in panic, like a trapped animal; in front of him, the first soldier rose to his feet and punched Aerin in the stomach with full force.

Pain rose up his body like hot air, his eyes watered, his legs gave in. The soldier behind him forced him down to his knees, and with his free hand jerked Aerin’s head up by the hair to look at his face.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said. From his world of pain, Aerin discerned only his short beard and a look of confusion.

“What is that?”

“A bloody spy is what this is. Who the shit is on watch?”

The first soldier was about to reply, but something in the corner of his vision must have worried him, for he glanced to the side, straightened up, and said nothing. The man holding Aerin also grew more rigid.

A third soldier walked towards them and stood right in front of Aerin. He was older than the other two, his short-cropped hair already grey, but he was a good head taller, and his enormous barrel-like trunk and massive forearms at once betrayed a still horrendous strength. The others’ eyes were following every one of his deliberate, lumbering moves. He was smiling, but the menace in his look was unmistakeable, a threat of sudden violence held back by the thinnest fence.

“Well?”

“We caught him just here and now, sir. He tried to steal the standard.”

Aerin only now registered that the older man was wearing a gilded scale mail and a heavy crimson cape, marks of a high rank. Oh shit. Oh shit, shit, shit.

Titulus was looking straight at Aerin, completely motionless, torch fire flickering in his eyeballs. More soldiers gathered around in a circle; nobody spoke while the general didn’t move.

At length, very slowly, Titulus turned his head towards the last speaker.

“So what you’re telling me, is that if the messengers hadn’t arrived just this moment, we would have had our Eagle stolen by a fresh-faced Kontarian boy?”

Without making perceptible moves, all the soldiers drew away from the addressed man, who cleared his throat and hopelessly looked around him for some hint for an answer. However, to his obvious relief, Titulus almost immediately turned away.

“Alright, name me the cocksuckers that were on watch and we’ll have a constructive discussion later. What’s this about?” he finally addressed the messengers, who were sitting impatient on horsebacks but had known better than to interrupt.

“The Kontarians attacked the infantry when they were stuck in the mud! They kept harassing us for hours. We have many wounded. Antenor is dead.”

There was a murmur among the soldiers. Aerin gasped as the one holding him twisted his arm further. Titulus’s lips quivered, revealing his teeth, but otherwise he kept perfect composure.

“How long ago?”

“Some two hours since the battle ended. We left as soon as it calmed but we couldn’t find you in this night,” the messenger said, a little more defensively than he had intended.

“Alright. Well, ladies,” he raised his voice and spoke to the whole clearing, “that’s it for Plan A. Get your asses on horse, we join with the infantry at once and fall back to open land. Jovin, Nicetas!” he shouted. Two soldiers, apparently with some wounds – one was hobbling, the other one had his hand in a sling – came towards him. “This campaign just got longer than we had expected. We’ll have to make rounds to Behem to resupply at least once. Just go there and wait for us.” The soldiers nodded and walked back. “Move everyone, if this little shit had friends around we’ll have Kontarians here soon!”

As the clearing turned to a scramble of men quickly packing and finding their horses, Titulus turned to Aerin again. “Well,” he said, with the same smile as before, “you must be real proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

Aerin, in his rising panic, could only stare.

“Shall I kill him?” asked the soldier that was gripping his hand.

Titulus smiled. “Well, what do you say to that, boy? Do you want to die?” He kept looking at Aerin, still like a rock among the swarming soldiers. “Get him… no. Jovin! Nicetas!” His voice carried above the confusion. The two injured men, already on horseback, approached.

“Take him with you and dump him in Paula’s cellar. When I come to resupply, I’ll have a talk with him. I’m sure he will tell me many useful things, if I ask him nicely.”

With that, he abruptly turned and walked to his own horse which his attendant had brought by.

Grumbling, the two soldiers dismounted. The one with two working arms produced a coil of hempen rope from his saddlebag.


	7. Black and White

Behem. Shit.

The castle rose over trees which covered a steep hill, overlooking the forests and the fields which fed it, and the town which it protected. It could be seen from many miles off, a high point in the flat valley of River Lene, topped with the royal standards of Harmen, announcing the sovereignty of the King over this land.

The province of the Lene Valley may not have been central to the kingdom, bordering the unruly Kontaria and some way off the major cities, but Behem was one of the securest places in the entire country. Though not very large, the castle was formidable, a mass of grey granite imported from far-off at great expense, with immense square towers and thick walls and a single gateway, narrow and hidden behind a wooden bridge over an artificial ravine, leading inside. The trees and the steep hill provided natural protection. There was no going in but through the gate, and breaking through the gate would require some serious siege engines. And who would know how to build those in this neck of the woods? The Kontarians?

And so Behem stood on its hill, assured and secure like a sleeping elephant, in the afternoon light.

There was a large outer courtyard and, in its back and beyond an internal gate, a second, inner courtyard. In the inner courtyard stood the Great Hall, a many-storeyed and impressive building of stone, with a spacious inside filled with great marble staircases, tall columns and arched ceilings, and dark wooden furniture standing against stark light walls.

And presently in the Great Hall, standing her ground alone on the chequered black and white stone floor, Gabrielle was facing a monster.

They were talking. The conversation was definitely not going as Gabrielle had planned.

“All I’m saying is,” she reiterated, and was immediately angry with herself about the defensive tone that she took, “I always spent my time going out for rides in the capital, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t do the same here. It’s a perfectly wholesome and harmless practice, I’m sure even you can’t find anything wrong with it.” The ‘even’ was not a good move. Backhanded insults could only provoke more trouble. Don’t lose your temper, she thought to herself. Stick to the plan.

But she couldn’t just let the monster boss over her like that. Gabrielle, after all, was a true Princess of Harmen, daughter of the King’s very own third cousin, some fifty-eighth in line of succession to the throne if you wanted to think really hard about it. She had even talked to the King several times in her life at court functions and he definitely even knew who she was, though also for some reasons she’d rather he wouldn’t.

The monster was only vaguely related to the royal family, through some cadet branch, not more than any common members of the high nobility. It was true that she was the King’s old friend and confidant, but that didn’t mean she got to order actual royalty around!

The monster’s name was Lady Paula of Behem. She was two hundred and sixty years old, give or take two hundred. She wore her dull hair long, and it was parted on top of her head and fell down and outward like a veil towards her shoulders, and her sizeable arms extended down and outward along her bulk to her waist where her black dress extended down and outward to the floor, so that the sum of all these things looked like a malicious dark cone. Near the top of this cone, two small clear eyes glittered under weak eyebrows and a strong brow.

Gabrielle wore white and had blond hair. The contrast between the two felt ridiculous and a little unnerving.

Lady Paula was presently smiling her battle-smile. It was a smile that was somewhat worse than her scowl. It was a smile that traumatized little children.

“We are, not sure how aware are you of this, at war with an enemy whose border is very near to here.” Paula’s voice was honeyed and high-pitched, as if she was talking to a baby. “It is absolutely too dangerous to venture out without ample guard, and I cannot spare any to leave the castle. It looks like you’ll have to learn to enjoy your time here.”

This was not true, and Paula knew that Gabrielle knew that. The Lady Paula herself had no problem riding all around the place in her carriage, even in recent days. But there was nothing to be won by pointing this out. Gabrielle reminded herself that she had spent the past two weeks trying to act nice specifically with this conversation in view. No false moves now. Maybe some bargaining would do.

“I’m sure I’d be perfectly safe at least on the road to town, and in the town itself.”

“Well, I’m saddened to find out that her ladyship finds Behem Castle inadequate to her entertainment. Perhaps if she liked cities so well, she should have conducted herself better in the capital.”

Oh, she went there. Gabrielle flushed. “And you’re enjoying punishing me, are you not? That’s what it’s all about!” Oh fucking fuck, so much for not losing temper. Lady Paula’s smile disappeared, though her eyes were triumphant.

“This is about the rules, girl!” she shouted, shrill. “The King wishes that you are taught some manners and so can become useful to the family! You will spend your time here, away from temptations, until your character is improved!”

All Gabrielle could do was to glare. That was easy enough – she was an excellent glarer. In fact, her glare and her bloodline always made her good at intimidating people. Evidently enough, she wasn’t intimidating at all to the mountain of evil that was Lady Paula.

The princess turned around without a word and stormed towards the door. Un-fucking-believable. Two weeks of effort and absolutely nothing won!

“Young lady!” Paula called out behind her. She stopped and glanced back. Paula was smiling again. This was terrible news.

“I don’t want you to think of me as your punisher. In fact, I concede that I have my shortcomings as a host and I will make sure to provide you with better entertainment from now on. Tonight, a minstrel will entertain me with a repertoire of patriotic songs, after which I shall dine with Father Pelagius and some notables from the town. You will join me, and we’ll spend a lovely evening together.” Gabrielle opened her eyes wide, horrified. “You will join me,” Paula reiterated, accenting all words evenly. “Now run along, child.”

That decrepit fucking bat! That slab of spite! Gabrielle kept thinking up more insults as she furiously swerved and skipped on the polished tiles among frightened stewards. She left the Great Hall, almost barging into a servant woman in the doorway. If Paula thought that she could control and punish her like that, she was sorely fucking mistaken. Patriotic songs and a dinner, indeed! This had been their one tacit understanding, that Gabrielle was at least excused from Paula’s get-togethers with the local officials, as the princess’s presence was both awful to her and embarrassing to Paula. This will not fly.

Her legs took her further, out of the inner courtyard into the outer, and towards the monks’ garden. That place, between the chapel and the corner of the outer walls, with its hedges, cypresses and yews, was isolated somewhat from the rest of the castle.

There she dropped on the ground beneath a poplar and thumped the back of her skull several times against the trunk. Muffled tones of a hymn were faintly reaching her from within the chapel. She stopped moving and just looked straight ahead, out to what of the outer courtyard visible from there.

There was the gatehouse, the only way in or out, small and constantly guarded by several foot soldiers. There was a cart coming through, loaded with supplies from the village, on its way to the larder. There were the stables by the opposing wall, and there was the kitchen house under a granite turret. On the ground, workers and servants were milling about. On the walls, soldiers. There were a couple dozen soldiers in the castle. They were all paid by Paula, maintained by Paula, and loyal to Paula. They were there to obey her every command as was due to their liege lord.

Of course Paula could do to her whatever she wanted. As long as no actual physical harm was caused to Gabrielle, she could have her locked up, in her chamber or in the chapel or in the dungeon for that bloody matter, she could have her fed only bread and water, she could punish her in a million different ways. There was no doubt in Gabrielle’s mind that she would do all that with immense pleasure. And it was because of that, not in spite of that, that Gabrielle’s family had sent her here.

The reason why Gabrielle ended up in Behem was never once mentioned in all her time in this place, by anyone. Sure. These people were too respectable to bring it up. But talked about or not, it gave them absolute power over herself and all of her royal blood. If she were to complain, nobody would take her side. This is all for her good, they would maintain. This is all for her good as a valuable commodity to be married off at a profit in wealth and influence. Behem was like a tar pit – you could struggle, but every move, every bit of resistance only made it worse, trapped you deeper. If Paula wanted Gabrielle to suffer for the whole evening, Gabrielle had to suffer.

She had been stupid to think otherwise. For the past few weeks she genuinely tried to be on her best behaviour – a task made more difficult by that clod Titulus staying over for days and subjecting her to his awful opinions on things in general – hoping that she’d warm Paula to her just a tiny bit, enough to win just one small concession – stupid short horse rides in her free time. No luck.

She gripped a root of the poplar and let out a groan that escalated to a low scream.

Mista peeked from behind the corner of the chapel and cautiously approached her.

“My lady, are you alright?”

Mista was the servant girl allotted to Gabrielle in Behem, and one of the few people there about her own age. Over the two months that Gabrielle’s spent in the castle, Mista’s been the only human being vaguely approaching the status of a companion. In endless evenings the princess would sometimes even sink so low as to have conversations with the common girl.

“She won’t let me leave the castle. I’m to spend the entire evening with her.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” She shuffled her feet. Gabrielle rolled her eyes at her.

“You wanted something?”

“Well, if you’re spending the evening with Her Ladyship, I thought I could have it off and go to the village…”

“Yeah, sure, go.” Gabrielle had a pretty decent idea what drew Mista to the village. The servant girl wasn’t keeping secret stashes of silphium tea for taste. She had a lover somewhere, in the world beyond the walls.

Figuring that this debacle of a day should at least result in someone getting laid, she let her take her leave. Funny thing, to have that power while stuck.

As Mista was giving her gushing thanks, Gabrielle’s attention was drawn to the gatehouse. The guards were shouting something and a soldier ran off towards the Great Hall.

“Mista, go see what’s this about, will you.”

The girl went about this instruction quick and came back with a report that some cavalrymen from Titulus’s unit were approaching. Clement, Lady Paula’s majordomo, soon bolted out of the inner courtyard, buttoning his sapphire vestments up as he went, and made for the gatehouse, where a small crowd of soldiers and workers was gathering. Gabrielle sighed, and got up to join them. There were no perspectives for a better entertainment than news from Kontaria that day, or perhaps that week, anyway.

Clement, always the killjoy, soon ordered everyone to disperse, which they did very half-heartedly. When the cavalrymen finally entered through the gate, it became apparent that he had a reason for this – they didn’t look too well, one with his hand in a sling and the other with a bandaged thigh. Those guys would definitely need a rest before they’d be in shape to tell any news. Gabrielle, therefore, decided to return to her chamber – when she noted the third horse. Someone was slung across its back. A wounded soldier? No, he was wearing no soldier’s garb. A captive!

The soldiers brought him down, and he stood on the ground unsteady, his wrists and ankles bound. He was very young, only about Gabrielle’s own age. Clement went up to him and talked with the guards for a moment. As this was happening, the captive boy looked around him, at the walls, the courtyard, and the people. For a moment, his eyes stopped on Gabrielle. She wasn’t sure that he actually saw her, though. He seemed too bewildered to notice anything, too scared to think.

A soldier cut the rope around the boy’s ankles and with Clement and another soldier they escorted him towards the tower adjacent to the chapel garden, where the old dungeon was. The two cavalrymen, meanwhile, were ushered towards the Great Hall, where the castle’s physician resided. Within minutes, the courtyard was cleared of all unusual activity. Only Gabrielle remained on her spot for a while, not really knowing why, before at last she too set out for her room.


	8. Descent

For two and a half days they had been riding, slowed down with the soldiers’ wounds. The first day they pushed on almost non-stop, and around noon the trees began to gradually clear and they reached open land, leaving Kontaria behind to the visible relief of the Harmenis. By a brook they paused for a meal and they gave Aerin some water but no food, which he wouldn’t have touched anyway. He’d struggled and trashed against his binds until his wrists bled but it was all hopeless. As the day went on his terror gave way to a withdrawn incredulity like a waking nightmare, and in this state he remained for the rest of the journey, registering the changing landscapes without believing them: the sloping hills of the borderlands, the uplands where Harmen began, the farmlands beyond. On the third day in the afternoon he craned his head and saw Behem Castle above him, and a wave of panic seized him anew as this distant dreaded destination turned up real before his eyes.

The road entered a grove of thick ancient trees and then sharply inclined until at last it reached a deep and vertical-walled ravine across which a drawbridge led to the gate. They rode inside and found themselves in a broad grassy courtyard surrounded by rusty grey stone buildings, and someone dragged Aerin down from the horse and put him on the ground.

He looked around, across this alien landscape. All the buildings seemed five times larger and stockier than the Copper Hall in his home village, dwarfing him and everyone else within. The people were looking at him with curiosity, hostility, or both. There were soldiers in chain mail, bearing arms matching those of the standards flying from the ramparts. There were workers, servants and footmen who paused on their everyday business. There was a girl, dressed in all white, with a pretty face but a mocking expression. There was a man in expensive vestments trotting towards him. “Clement’s coming,” one soldier said to another, and they grabbed Aerin and propped him up. The man exchanged a few words with the two cavalrymen of Titulus, then came to look at the captive.

“Well,” he said. “Isn’t it nice when you have unexpected guests.” He bared his grey teeth. The soldiers dutifully chuckled.

Clement was somewhere between youth and middle age, his hair sweeping over a high forehead and his beard neatly trimmed. His shoulders thrown back, his eyes joyful and his chin thrown up, his entire body betrayed delight at finding himself powerful in the face of the powerless.

“Shall we escort him to the city prison, sir?” asked the soldier to Aerin’s left. Clement pulled his eyebrows together.

“No, no. Titulus himself sent him for us to keep, so we’ll treat him with extra security precautions. Put him in the old dungeon.”

The soldiers looked at each other. The same one spoke again.

“But, sir… most of our force is gone with Titulus. We’re on a skeleton crew here until he returns. Who’s going to guard the dungeon?”

“Right.” The majordomo scratched his beard aggressively, but almost immediately his face brightened up. “I know just the man for the job. Dodo!”

The soldiers looked at each other again, for a bit longer this time. Now the other one spoke.

“Are you sure we should trust Dodo with this, sir?”

“Absolutely. Dodo is the most reliable man in this castle. He just… he just needs guidance sometimes. Call him at once!” he shouted to the nearest gate guard.

The three men then walked Aerin towards a massive squat tower away from all the buildings. The tower’s form protruded inside from the castle walls, and it was a small tiered castle unto itself, with its two sides meeting at a right angle occupying the entire eastern corner of the courtyard – one side facing the open ground itself, the other facing the chapel garden and shaded with its trees. In the near side there were two reinforced doors. The right one was open and inside of it was a staircase leading to the upper floors. The left one, at present, was closed.

The man named Dodo must have been nearby, because he caught up with the men even before they reached the tower. He was roughly the size of a bear, and about as hairy. He saluted Clement awkwardly.

“Dodo, I’ve got work for you!” the majordomo said, producing from his pocket a ring with maybe twenty keys, and endeavouring to find the right one. “Drop your work in the kennels, you’re going to watch over our prisoner now.”

“Oh,” replied Dodo, in a deep low voice. He glanced at the two men holding Aerin. “Which one is the prisoner?”

Clement stopped fidgeting with the keys, but only for a second. “The boy, Dodo. The one in the middle.”

“Oh.” He paused. “See, that’s what I thought. What with him being a stranger, and what with him being tied.” He beamed and nodded at Aerin. Aerin stared.

 “Ah, you see, Dodo, what intellectual feats you are capable of when you apply yourself.” Clement finally found the right key and unlocked the door. It opened with a tortured creak of a mechanism long unused.

It led into a room with some basic furniture – a dusty table, chairs and benches, heavy wooden chests – evidently meant for the guards. On one wall was a hook with another ring of keys larger than Clement’s, and several torches. Across from the entrance a passage opened, long flat steps leading down.

This limestone tunnel was narrow, and its ceiling low, and Dodo had to bend almost in half to navigate it. At the bottom of the stairs the passage opened to a large cavernous vault. There was no need to light the torches – there was plenty of shadowy daylight reaching the dungeons from grated windows. On their right side was solid wall. On their left, a cell – a large space, separated from the corridor by a heavy iron grille with a door in it. The corridor followed on, into the darkness, where presumably more cells could be found; the party, however, stopped right there at the first one, which Clement opened with the key retrieved from the wall.

“Okay Dodo, listen,” he started. “You are never to leave the tower while the prisoner is here, which we think will be about two weeks. I’ll arrange food and drink to be brought here, for you and the prisoner.” He looked around the cell. It was rather large, meant to accommodate maybe ten prisoners, but it was now completely empty – just the bare stone floor, two grated windows high up the wall, and several pairs of black iron manacles hanging from the high ceiling in the middle.

“Alright, Titulus wants the prisoner to survive, so we’ll have to make some accommodations. We’ll bring some straw for a bedding later today. Do not talk to him, do not let him talk to you. Punch him in the face if he tries. Always make sure he’s manacled if you open the door, you hear?”

Dodo smiled and nodded.

“Oh right, he can never have any sharp objects, or,” he eyed the chains hanging from the ceiling, “or anything he can hang himself with. Take away his clothes, we’ll get him something threadbare and safe.”

The soldiers grabbed at Aerin’s clothes, and he had neither strength nor hope to struggle anymore. They stripped him naked, pushed him inside the cell, and locked the door.

“I hope you’ll enjoy your stay,” Clement said to him, grinned, and walked away, the other men falling behind. Their steps echoed as they went up the stairs and into the foreroom. There were some more indistinct voices, and then the entry door was shut, far off.

The sound was like a wake-up call. Aerin sprang to his feet and grabbed at the iron grating. It was peeling but solid, and didn’t move at all when he tugged at bar after bar with all his panicked strength. The lock in the door was likewise well made and he spent the next ten minutes looking for anything on the floor, a bit of metal, a piece of rock, a solid twig even, that could pick it or bust it open – but the floor only supplied him with ancient dust. He jumped high enough to grab at the grille of each window, but they were likewise sturdy. He poked at every stone in the wall, each one cold and deaf and unmovable. He took a searching look around the cell. Reality refused to change. There was no way out. He stared. The cell did not stare back.

He crawled into a corner, brought his knees to his chest and his fists to his forehead. He closed his eyes. The damp rock pressed against the skin of his back. His breath broke and he started crying, and tried to stop as the dungeon reflected back to him the echo of his voice. He’d die here, he thought. In some two weeks, Titulus would come here, torture him, and kill him. All of this because he was a stupid dumbass who risked his life for a dumbass flag and dumbass glory. Fuck you, sagas. Fuck you, bards. He’s thrown away all his dumbass future. It was to end soon, and violently.

He looked up. High above him there was the stone ceiling, with the chains dropping from it. He waited for himself to calm down a bit. He pulled himself up to look out of the windows. He could see the chapel garden from the ground level, and the wall of the chapel itself, and bits of the castle wall which it connected to. His windows were sunk in large niches which limited his view. He could not see even the tiniest bit of the sky. He dropped down and slouched again in his corner. The cell was fairly bright with sunlight, but the sun itself he’d never see again in his life.

When Dodo entered the cell an hour later with a bale of straw, a blanket, and some old rags, he found his prisoner still there, looking with unfocused reddened eyes at nothing.

“Well,” Dodo said, fashioning a bedding out of the straw, “I hope the bedding is comfortable and the new clothes fit! Oh, wait,” he checked himself and tapped at his head. “No talking.”

“No talking,” he kept muttering to himself as he locked the cell behind him and disappeared upstairs.


	9. Everything Is Terrible

These were exciting times. These were glorious times. War in the east, war in the south. Even as Titulus marched into Kontaria – a modest invasion of a modest land – the greater part of the Kingdom’s armies crossed over to sun-soaked Redona, to finally bring that mighty foe to their knees. These were times for men to earn glory in war, and for everyone to bask in that glory. News from both fronts were eagerly waited for.

The meats were choice and the spices exotic and the wine finest, but the company more than made up for it. Clement kept coming up with eruptions of his ironclad wit. The notables from the city kept exchanging generic comments and crooning like a small herd of doves. And the two cavalrymen, despite their fatigue and injuries, were forcefully invited and made to feed all scraps of frontline tidings into the relentless maw of Lady Paula, to whose left a blank-eyed Gabrielle sat wishing for the merciful release of death.

“But I’m sure it was just a temporary setback, then,” the unstoppable hostess inquired of Nicetas, who was having some trouble jabbing a marinated mushroom with a fork held in his sole functional hand.

“Well, obviously Titulus thinks of things like that. He used the same manoeuvre during Lord Fulerad’s rebellion, and it brought us a great victory then. But separating the cavalry from the infantry is always risky, to be sure, my lady, and then the sudden rain came and we couldn’t join together like we thought.”

“Ah, it was because of the weather, then,” crooned Paula, her chin rested on the intertwined fingers of her hands. “It was the verdict of the gods that the barbarians should have an upper hand that night, we must accept that.” The soldiers grumbled in uneasy agreement. A servant came around offering the lady more wine, which she declined. Gabrielle, seizing the opportunity, intercepted him and topped up her glass, urging him to fill it to the brim. Paula went on. “Well, I’m sure a general of Titulus’s brilliance will find it easy to change the course of this war and crush the Kontarians.” She smiled when she mentioned his name. It wasn’t her battle smile. It was genuine, heartfelt and trusting.

Gabrielle took a good long gulp of the wine. See, that was the problem with Paula. She really, really believed. She believed in the majesty of the Kingdom, in the divine right of the King, in the gods’ harsh justice, in the ordained order of it all. This excursion into Kontaria Gabrielle believed to be just an easy grab for money and influence by Titulus – who was a skilled and courageous warrior and yet in many ways a common scheming crook – while also serving as a quick robbing raid to secure more resources for the war in Redona. But in Paula’s eyes it was a holy war, another stage of some eternal struggle of good and evil.

Father Pelagius, the old bald priest who was the head of the castle’s chapel, sensed Paula’s mood and fawned to it as usual. “All the might and majesty of Harmen is behind Titulus, his victory is just a matter of time. The King is not taking this effort lightly. After all, while he himself went to Redona, he’s left behind Duke Oren to supervise the war in Kontaria. And I don’t think I’ll be controversial if I’ll say that in the whole realm, Oren is the second most important person only to the King!”

Paula nodded confidently, and Gabrielle looked on, curious. Did they really think that Oren of Haratraz calling the shots was good for this war? Did they sincerely believe in the man’s impartiality? Were they ignorant, naïve, or just in denial?

“We’re sure that we’ll vanquish the Kontarians eventually,” said Jovin with some reserve. “It might take some time though.”

“Yeah,” rejoined Nicetas. “Titulus will probably come around here to resupply, with Your Ladyship’s permission, rest a bit, interrogate the boy…”

“Ah, the boy!” Lady Paula clapped her hands. “You say he tried to steal the Royal Eagle?”

“We found him right in the middle of our camp. He’d already laid his hands on it! Those guards are so lucky that the messengers arrived just then. Still, they’ll never get out of latrine digging duty for as long as Titulus breathes.”

“Capital!” Paula said. “But you see, this boy’s behaviour is perfectly typical of the Kontarians. I kept saying this to our Lord the King for years. They’re a bunch of thieves, rapists and schemers, they are uncivilized, and they lack any ability to think ahead. I mean he’d probably never seen a thing this nice in his life and just had to try and grab it!” She looked around the table, with a horrifying silent laughter on her wide-open mouth, tiny glittering eyes almost disappearing and the wispy eyebrows soaring. The guests obliged her by laughing and agreeing.

“Actually, their cavalry tactics in the forests are very precisely thought out and—” Jovin managed to say, before Nicetas silenced him with a kick to his bad leg.

“Well, I’m sure even the most barbarous people are bound to acquire some useful skill over the course of their unhappy history,” said Clement, trying to smooth over the misstep, that in Behem a contradiction of Lady Paula certainly constituted. “Don’t you agree, Princess?”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle downed the last of her glass and with a hard stare communicated to Clement that it was in fact impossible to give less of a shit about the merits of a country of forest hobos than she, Gabrielle, was giving at the moment.

“Clement, speaking of that boy, you did arrange everything in the dungeon?”

“Yes, my lady. Dodo is keeping a full-time watch.”

This appeared to please Paula, but one of the townsmen, an old man in showy red frock, looked up, uncertain.

“Dodo? Excuse me, your ladyship, isn’t he that large man that’s a bit… simple?”

Paula chortled. “And that’s what makes him an excellent guard. He will watch over the prisoner exactly as he’s told, and he can’t be reasoned with, bribed, or begged to. Nobody can persuade Dodo to deviate from the orders that we give him. Well, maybe the King himself, if he ever comes here.” She waved her hands like a giant crow. “Clement, tell them the story with the larder!”

The story was this: once Paula and Clement went to visit the villages for a few days, and left Dodo to guard the larder door. But they forgot to tell him that he was supposed to let the supplies officer in. On coming back, they found the men bruised, everyone dizzy with hunger after days of subsisting on berries and roots, and Dodo standing firm with his back against the door.

The guests chuckled the chuckle of people hearing the same story for the sixtieth time. Paula finished chewing on a piece of veal and returned to an earlier thought. “Yes, Dodo would have been a fit guard for the most cunning prisoner, not to speak of a Kontarian. Our guest is probably too amazed to have a roof over his head for the first time in his life to try to escape, anyway.”

“Right,” Clement said. “I’m sure we all agree that the Kontarians, though they may speak the same language as us, cannot be considered a truly worthy people or any sort of partners. I propose a toast to Titulus and his upcoming subjugation of that land!”

You all seem to have traded very well with the Kontarians before this war broke out, thought Gabrielle, using the toast as an excuse to procure more wine. All their cups raised high, the princess’s eyes met Clement’s again, and he smiled blandly. Gabrielle instinctively scowled and leaned a little bit back, pressing her neck to the collar of her dress. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something about the polite, dull majordomo that always set her on her edge.


	10. Fantasy

It was late at night when the dinner mercifully ended and Gabrielle was free to ascend the great balustraded staircase and retire to her chamber. The chamber was on the third floor of the Great Hall, fortunately quite a long way away from where Lady Paula was residing. It was in the corner of the building, and you had to traverse a good length of the hallway’s long lush carpet to reach it. The only other resident of the hallway was currently the servant girl Mista, whose small room was adjacent to Gabrielle’s.

Gabrielle entered and leaned against the door with relief. Lonely as this place was, it was a thousand times better than the company downstairs. Without anyone bothering her, she could at least remember that she was still her own person, and not Paula’s toy.

The chamber was fairly cosy. Large windows opened to both exterior walls, framed with ivy on the outside. There was a red canopy bed, a matching carpet, a cabinet with a mirror, a fireplace – unused now in the warm June nights – and some other basic furniture. There was a basin with clean water on the table. Gabrielle splashed some on her face. She felt a need to purify herself of all the Paula-infested atmosphere of daytime. Wine was pleasantly buzzing in her head.

She pulled off all those white clothes that they made her wear and dumped them on the floor. Once completely naked, she flung open the window from which she could see some of the plains below the castle and the city with its flickering lights. She leaned out, rested her elbows on the windowsill, and breathed freely in. The night was loud with cicada song.

If there was any soldier making rounds on the walls that happened to look up at this moment, he was in for a spectacle, she thought. Not that any one of them would appreciate it, though. Her hopeful investigation of them in her first days here revealed to her dread that they were all of a tribe of male Paulas, mean-spirited and grouchy. No doubt the castle crew underwent a years-long process of careful selection to arrive at such a state of affairs.

She snarled out in frustration. She was fairly drunk. In the capital she’d now be finding a place with good lively music, and a good-looking boy to dance with. She nodded a few times to some rhythm in her memory.

She brushed her hair away to her back and ran her finger along her collarbone. On lucky enough nights, the boy she danced with would prove worthy of further attention, and she’d take him away and sleep him. Being drunk always made her horny. She ran her hands up and down her abdomen, grabbed at her breasts, let them bounce down. Damnit. Was there really nobody in this gods-forsaken province that was down to fuck? 

She walked away from the window and jumped back-first at the bed, soft linens ballooning around her. She reached for her pussy, and set out to invoke the memories of the fine cocks that in better times had filled it.

She ran her fingers down her pubic hair, which even in this hopeless place she kept neatly trimmed in a thin strip – always be prepared – and downwards further, circling round her labia. Her other hand travelled smoothly along the expanse of her skin. Her thoughts flew to Philippe, the handsome son of that urbane old marquess. She pinched her nipple like he used to, sighing with approval as it hardened between her fingers. The other hand darted for her clit, circling, changing pressure, invading.

She spread her legs wider and readjusted herself. It’s been a while since she’s seen Philippe. She couldn’t even picture him that clearly anymore. The pleasure ceased to mount; it took effort to focus. She anxiously looked for another fantasy.

Her mind immediately supplied her with the Kontarian boy, standing in the courtyard and looking scared, reddish auburn hair trimmed at the back and the sides revealing the neat angles of his head but falling freely over the forehead, getting into searching pale blue eyes – alright, Gabrielle, stop. This is just sad. How about Alex?

She still hated Alex, but damn, that was a great body and a great cock. Her leg twitched a bit just from her thinking about it, girthy and firm and soaring right before her eyes. Her free hand now proceeded more aggressively, with more pressure. The sex wasn’t as good as the body, she recalled. The guy frankly was an idiot, too. It was pretty much his fault that she ended up in this fucking castle. She kept fingering herself mechanically, but she lost the thread again. Stupid drunk brain, turn me on, damnit!

That Kontarian boy again. Slim and tall, and moving with a kind of... Alright, how about Marc? That was before Philippe, even. Also, it was awkward.

The boy, the boy. She wondered if he looked good naked. He’d probably be well built, from all that stuff they do in the forests all day. She wondered if he had a nice smile, how would it light those eyes up. She wondered if he had a nice hard cock.

Her toes curled, then straightened. Her free hand brushed past the abdomen and then reached below where her other hand was working faster and with more conviction now, and she pushed two fingers inside herself, getting nice and wet.

She wondered if he’s a good kisser. She imagined his tongue in her mouth, and her heartbeat and her breath both accelerated. She wondered if he’s a te-ease. She wondered – her leg kicked out and she spread herself wider, and her back muscles contracted – she wondered what’s his voice like. She wondered – fingers gliding freely inside her, dripping to the knuckles – she wondered – oh fuck – she wondered if he’d moan out her name – “oh fuck!” – as he came inside her!

The tension now subsided all over her body as she sank into the bedsheets. She still moaned out the next couple of breaths, until she calmed down. She raised her hand and saw her fingers glisten in the moonlight, before letting it fall freely on her stomach to join with the rest of her drained body.

That’s a new low, girl, she said to herself. Now you masturbate to weird woods people. Let’s just file this under shameful wanks and never think of this again.

Nah, said another part of her, deeper underneath. You are not ashamed at all. That was the nicest orgasm you’ve had in a while. You go! And if you wanna hear something funny, just imagine Paula’s reaction if she found out who you just got off to and how much fun you had. She’d have an aneurysm on the spot!

Gabrielle did imagine it, and chuckled noiselessly. That made for two incredibly pleasant mental images that she came up with in quick succession. Who would have thought that this evening would end on such a high note?


	11. Despondency

At the same moment Aerin, unaware of the joy he’s caused, was lying on his straw bedding and thinking.

What do people do in such situations? He fumbled around his head for all useful information he may have acquired in his lifetime. He remembered that saga of the hero Heges of Elis, who upon being captured by his enemies and chained to a wall by his ankle, managed to obtain a knife, hack off his foot, and hobble away.

Well yeah but my ankle is uselessly free, so fuck Heges.

For a thousandth time he considered whether it was possible to prey loose some bar or some stone, whether there was a flaw in the design of this dungeon somewhere. No, idiot, his inner voice replied, you know very well that this dungeon was built by smart people capable of constructing these huge structures, and they were certainly smarter than you who are a useless vain dumbass that’s going to die!

He exhaled and shut down this current of thought, with some effort. He’s spent the first hours of his imprisonment in panic and in despair. It was no help in trying to find a way out, and if there really was no way out, it was no fit way to end his life, either.

His guard, Dodo, was plainly and completely unreachable. Aerin did not know what his deal was, but he seemed to have no other desires than to perfectly obey his orders. There was still maybe a chance to outsmart him somehow.

Of course, if there was no chance to get out, he could still try to kill himself before anyone else had a chance to do it their way. This also seemed tricky. He could hardly strangle himself with straw. He could possibly climb the grating or one of those ridiculous manacles hanging from the ceiling and drop headfirst down, but though the ceiling was high, it didn’t look quite high enough to do the job.

Still, he said to himself, if the worst happened and Titulus came here to torture him, was it really worse than what had already taken place? He’s already lost his freedom. If there was no escape from here, his life was already over. He’s lost it all. Everything that Titulus could offer him now was maybe a few days of pain, and what was that compared to the loss of all his days in the sun, a loss already sustained, if you really thought about it?

He wasn’t entirely sure he bought this line of reasoning, but it had to do.

He pulled at his rags. They were some old jute trousers and an old jute shirt, coming apart at seams, thin and torn, of nondescript greyish hue.

He thought of his parents.

Did you think about the pain you’d cause them, dipshit, when you crawled into that camp? How did that scene play out, when they found out that their only son won’t be returning home? Who told them? How are they now?

He made himself stop thinking of his parents. Carry on. Carry on.

He certainly had a lot of valuable information, about ways to get around the forest, about the number of warriors, about where the villages where, and where all the valuables and food caches were hidden. But he wouldn’t tell, no matter what they did to him. Kontarians may remember him as an idiot, but not as a traitor. This, turns out, was his battle to fight in this war. Say nothing.

He just wished that someone was here to compose a saga about it. The Saga Of Aerin Who Sucked At Stealth But Was Not In The Least Bit Scared To Be Mashed Into A Pulp, Or To Have His Eyes Gouged Out, And His Elbows Broken.

He snorted in the dark. He had to admit that this sounded like a really shitty saga.


	12. Curiosity

Gabrielle was woken up the next morning by a servant knocking cautiously at her door and informing her that it was almost time for breakfast. With Mista not yet back, the princess had overslept. She hastily washed, dressed up and prepped up by herself. Useless castle with useless servants, she thought, tying back her hair.

Over her entire stay her breakfast arrangements were such that she had to walk all the way to the chapel in the outer courtyard and eat with Father Pelagius and his sullen monks. She’d then have to spend several hours in that same chapel as the good learned servants of the gods supervised her moral improvement, with a special focus on the virtues of modesty and chastity.

Pelagius wasn’t that bad, she supposed. Like all people of note in Behem he had acquired his position by relentlessly yes-manning Paula over a great many years, but he wasn’t half as devoted to her Opinions On How Things Should Be as Clement was. In fact, when out of her sight, he gave himself fully to a carefree and harmless life of a functionary supervised only by the gods and never bothered anyone much except for the cooks. Despite the vast amounts of partridges, lambs, geese, eels, grapes, pies, tarts and miscellaneous pastries which he consumed every week, the body that supported his enormous bald head remained lank and healthy, which he took as an obvious sign of divine favour and a direction to proceed exactly as he has.

The three younger monks were much worse, and inclined at the slightest provocation to indulge in lengthy discussions about the decaying morals of the youth and especially the evils of loose women tempting the men away from the Path of Righteousness, which Path they conceived of as mostly paved with taking up your sword and skewering anyone who looks at you funny. The Gods, Honour, and Devotion to the King and the Country was all that mattered.

Although the three were themselves steadfast minds whose moral and intellectual superiority shielded them from vulgar carnal temptations, the continued and regular presence of an attractive young lady with a somewhat questionable reputation produced some odd effects in them – manifestly a redoubled fervour in scorning and condemning the easily tempted youth, a sudden fondness of long cold baths, and a curious propensity at odd times of day and night to visit the privy and emerge from there calmer but avoidant of eye contact.

Their names were Vulmar, Adhemar and Valdemar. They were in their twenties, and their clean-shaven faces were almost perpetually shaded by the hoods of their vestments. For all conceivable intents and purposes, they seemed perfectly interchangeable in every possible way.

When the thing happened and Gabrielle’s parents, with the King’s counsel, decided that an extended stay in Behem would be the next step for her, Paula charged Pelagius with overseeing the Princess’s education. This was much to the priest’s consternation, as education of young women lay way beyond the borders of all his areas of expertise. He quickly decided that the best course of action was to leave her alone to read an instructive text from the scriptures or from the commentaries to the scriptures or from the commentaries to the commentaries, and then have her discuss it with the young monks (he seemed largely unaware of their internal struggle (which was not taking place)), while he himself could doze off somewhere. This arrangement was also mostly fine with Gabrielle, who upon realizing that the discussions consisted entirely of each of the three furiously attempting to show himself the smartest while she just sat there looking on, abandoned reading the assigned texts entirely and started sneaking in her own literature. Each week Pelagius would report to Paula on the wonderful progress that Gabrielle was making. 

And so that day after breakfast she followed the three monks to a small and shady chamber at the back of the chapel where they settled around a simple table of dark wood. The topic of discussion was an ancient text on charity but the discussion had quickly outgrown it as the interlocutors started to veer from subject to subject in order to one-up themselves on purity and radicalism. They were in a great mood – the fresh offensives into Kontaria and Redona meant to them that good was prevailing over evil.

Gabrielle played with a strap of her dress. About the only thing she liked about this dress was its stiff collar, which she could pop so that it covered her neck. She enjoyed this sensation, the fabric guarding her like walls of her own tiny castle, isolating her slightly, resisting the overbearing Behem outside.

Okay, there was one other thing she liked about the dress. It did have pockets. Maybe when she rises in prominence enough to raze this fucking castle and execute everyone in it, Gabrielle will spare the dress maker.

As the monks went from charity to the advantages of corporal punishment to how soft the youth of today has grown and how the wars will do them good, Gabrielle’s eyes wandered around the stout carved stone columns which supported the room’s vaulted ceiling and the richly embroidered tapestries that hung among them. On one of them a woman was pictured whose dress below the waist was made of bricks, like a castle tower, guarded by a pair of lions. Domalba, the goddess of chastity. Gabrielle closed her eyes. The thick chapel walls muffled all sound from the courtyard, and the place seemed well insulated from all of humanity and all signs of life. The conversation slid from the softness of the youth to its terrible potential consequences, as illustrated by the decline and fall of the Gebra Empire.

“Their problem was, they’d grown effeminate and weak, and this is what exposed them to their enemies!” said Valdemar. The other two nodded in assent and watched him as if the thought was fresh and original, rather than the flotsam of acquired and tediously repeated folk wisdom which it actually was. “It could happen to us, too. Thank the gods we have such good leadership. There are yet a few people with true grit like in the old days.”

“There are yet, but few. The King is great, may he live long. But who beside him? Not the Crown Prince, to be sure”

“No. But there’s the Count of Biriat.”

“And Duke Oren.”

“And then there’s Titulus.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Titulus is all that a true man should be. We all saw that ourselves.”

“His victories will surely inspire our people and show them the true way.”

Gabrielle, safe in her tiny castle, did not even flinch. Just last week for three long days she had to sit next to Titulus at elaborate feasts that Paula threw in his honour as he passed with his army, and the man never neglected to make offhand comments to her about the duty of the men to be bold and fierce and the duty of the women to be chaste and obedient, and who was he to lecture her anyway, that annoying upstart dipshit with not even a drop of royal blood in him?!

“I think that his victory over Kontaria would be especially precious and instructive, considering the Kontarian ways.”

“What are the Kontarian ways?” Gabrielle butted in.

There was a collective intake of air.

“The Kontarian ways?”

“The Kontarian ways?!”

“They are a degraded, depraved people! They couple in the open and they take many partners at once!”

“They enter unnatural unions! Men lie with men and women with women!”

“They sacrifice their children to their gods!”

“They drink the blood of virgins to preserve their youth!”

“They kidnap Harmeni peasants and inflict all sorts of debauched practices upon them!”

The litany and description of Kontarian customs went on for a while. The monks seemed to have extensive knowledge of all Kontarian sexual transgressions in minute detail, and they seemed to be on their minds quite a lot; no doubt this was a commendable devotion to the principle of knowing one’s enemy. Gabrielle listened to the tales of the horrid, impure, blood (blood among other things) sucking people at the Kingdom’s borders with way more interest than usual.

She squinted in sunshine when she left the chapel shortly after noon. She usually would have most of the rest of the day left to herself. With the absence of any sort of entertainment, companionship, or anything productive to do, Gabrielle supposed that the point of these hours was to have her bore herself to death.

As she crossed the outer courtyard, wondering how many more weeks could she endure here before jumping off her third-floor window, her eyes caught the massive tower on the other side of the chapel’s garden. The Kontarian boy would be kept in the dungeon underneath. She stopped as a thought occurred to her. Some of the dungeon’s grated low windows opened to the garden, at ground level, hidden in niches large enough to sit in. They were sheltered from the rest of the courtyard by some shrubs and several yew trees belonging to the garden. If he was held in those particular cells, she could probably take a look at him or even talk to him without anyone noticing.

She shook her head and continued on her way. She still had enough dignity left not to chat up low-born dross while on a constant look-out like an idiot. Besides, the guy was probably pretty dim. Why ruin the fantasy by meeting the real thing?

Back at the Great Hall she found out that Paula was not in the castle, having gone off to a pleasure ride with Clement and some entourage. As glad as she was not to be threatened with her Ladyship’s company, yesterday’s anger rose in her again. Too dangerous for rides, my ass.

She found Mista sleeping in her little room. Not waking her up, she went to her own chamber, threw herself on the bed, and watched the canopy above.

She could write to her parents, she supposed, promising to change her ways and begging them to let her out of here. She clenched her fist over the duvet. No, they could fuck right off. They will send for her sooner or later, and then they’ll see if this moronic thing worked. Until then, she’ll find her some ways to survive here. Maybe she’ll take up weaving tapestries, or gardening.

She sat up. The boy in the dungeon would not leave her mind. He was the only thing in this shit castle that was even remotely interesting right now. But to talk to him through the window would make her look ridiculous – he’d immediately figure out that she didn’t have permission to do that, and by extension that she needed permission in the first place, and therefore that she was just some unimportant girl who did not command respect. Yet to talk to him normally, in the dungeon, she would have to get past Dodo. Dodo would not let anyone see him. Gabrielle remembered Paula’s word. Nobody could overrule the orders Dodo had been given, except maybe the King himself, should he visit.

A small voice piped up in her head. And are you still not, despite your present situation, of royal stock?

Paula and Clement were away, after all. This day invited experiments.


	13. Majesty

Dodo was leaning back in his chair, seeing how far he can go before he loses his balance, when the door opened with no prior knocking and the young noble lady walked in. The start that it gave him tipped him over, and for an incredibly long moment his enormous body was caught in a state of weightlessness, him pushing it forward but gravity commanding it back. The impasse was only broken when he planted his feet on the floor and let the chair fall with a bang between them, as he himself remained more or less vertical in an elaborate squat.

“Yes?” he said.

“Good afternoon,” the lady answered. “We haven’t ever been introduced, and I thought it was a bit of an oversight on Lady Paula’s part not to have me meet all her devoted servants. I am Princess Gabrielle.”

“Oh,” said Dodo. He looked her up and down. She was dressed in white, except for a solid gold necklace and a solid gold bracelet, inlaid with tiny blue gems. She was very pretty, but there was something disconcerting about her expression, something of a predatory bird. “Hello. Dodo.”

“Nice to meet you, Dodo.” She walked in and took a look around, her footsteps loud and crisp on the stone floor. “Do you stay here all day?”

“Yes, ma’am.” At this point Dodo realized that he was still squatting and his muscles were beginning to ache, so he unfolded himself back to his regular, considerable height. “I been ordered to look over the prisoner.”

“Indeed?” Gabrielle asked, admiring the many iron manacles piled on a large rectangular chest. “You never leave this dungeon?”

“Clement asked me to stay at all times.”

“It must be pretty boring.”

Dodo didn’t quite follow. “Clement asked me to stay at all times.”

She could see now that Clement and Paula were not mistaken. It was truly beyond the man’s scope of thought to even imagine disobeying their orders. Alright then. Careful.

“Good man!” she smiled as she turned to him. “You’re a credit to this Kingdom.” The bits of Dodo’s face not covered with beard reddened and he and mumbled something to the floor. She sat by the top of the table. “No, no, I mean it. Clement’s authority comes from Lady Paula, and hers comes from the King, and his, by the right of his royal bloodline, comes from the gods themselves.”

“Why, that’s true!” said Dodo, picking up his chair. “I know that’s true, because that’s what Clement says!”

“And Clement is a wise man,” she retorted, fighting back a wince. “If more people were like you, Dodo, this country would be the most excellent place on earth. We all should remember that our foremost duty is our obedience to the King and his representatives.” He scratched the back of his head, sat down, and fell back to incoherent mumbling. He wasn’t exactly used to such lavish compliments. Gabrielle licked her front teeth. Alright, now.

“I’m a great-granddaughter of a king, you know.” Dodo opened his eyes wide and looked at her as if she’d just fallen from the sky. She made sure to carelessly adjust her necklace, which bore a small pendant – a royal eagle. “Yes. I’m directly descended from Theodoric the Red.”

She was. King Theodoric had three sons, the third of which had only a single daughter, who married a nobleman for whom this was such an upward move that he took her name and quartered his arms with hers, and they had two sons, the younger of which was her father. This made her actually the great-great-granddaughter of a king and only a member of a cadet branch of the extended royal family, but these details were of nobody’s concern right now. The King, on the infrequent occasions he met her father, did refer to him as his dear cousin, so there.

Such deliberations were certainly right now not on Dodo’s mind, for it was occupied by a sudden alarm brought about by his realization that the room wasn’t very clean or in any other way suited for this unexpected audience. He attempted to discreetly brush some bread crumbs away from the table with his hand. Gabrielle smiled.

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Dodo,” she said, standing up. “I won’t distract you from your duties anymore.” She turned to the door.

“Always at your service, your worship!” shouted Dodo, getting up violently enough to knock the chair back down.

“Thank you. Say…” she turned to face him again. “Now that I think of it, will you do me a slight favour?”

“Of course, your worship!” he straightened up at attention. She had to exert herself to keep her tone casual now.

“Will you let me talk to your prisoner? Alone?”

“Oh. Ah.” His face jerked from her to the dungeon entryway a couple of times. “Clement said that nobody’s supposed to… um. Er.”

Gabrielle said nothing, just looked at him, questioning and unwavering, like an examiner of some sort.

“Be right back, your worship!” he yelled, grabbed a keyring and a pair of manacles, and ran downstairs. Gabrielle closed her eyes. Yes!


	14. What Are You Doing Here?

Aerin's dreams tossed him violently in many strange directions that night as he lay in shallow sleep on his straw bed. At times he was free in Kontaria under an endless sky; still at others he was being captured, hauled off or interrogated. All morning he spent dozing off in his corner wrapped in his blanket against the chill, there being nothing better to do. Later he poked around every stone and every bar yet again.

He wondered how the war was going. He wondered how Leapfrog was doing. He thought of his family again, and again a feeling of guilt piled up on top of his grief. He explained to himself again that at least he’ll do them credit by not talking to Titulus, no matter what happens.

The highlight of his day so far was when a lizard slithered in through a window and hanged out with him for half an hour, before slithering back out. He pulled himself up to the grille and watched the lawn in which it had disappeared, and which was now at his eye level. He was pleased to note that the surroundings looked like a nice place for a lizard to live in. He hoped that the lizard would have a nice day. He decided that the lizard’s name was Erik. Unless it was a lady lizard, in which case it was Erika.

He was pacing around his cell wondering how were you supposed to tell a guy lizard from a lady lizard anyway, when suddenly frantic heavy footsteps fumbled down the stairs, and seconds later a flushed Dodo bolted out of the passageway.

“Oi,” Dodo said, shaking a pair of manacles. “Hands!”

“What?”

“No talking!”

Now what’s this about? Aerin walked to the grating and stuck both hands out through the bars, letting Dodo clasp the manacles on. He watched the guard’s movements closely. Maybe if one day he could catch him by surprise and pull his arm in and twist it or something…

Having locked the manacles, Dodo opened the hinged part of the grating which functioned as the cell door. To Aerin’s surprise, he then ushered him to the middle of the cell.

“What are we doing?”

“No talking!”

He led him under one of the overhead shackles, jerked his hands up – gods the strength of that guy! – locked the overhead shackles, unlocked the portable manacles, laid them on the floor, left the cell, and hurried upstairs. That was another problem. The guy was as meticulous as he was strong, and apparently the more nervous he was, the more meticulous he became.

That was Aerin’s first thought, but now that he was left alone, fear crept into his mind. Was someone coming to interrogate him, right now? He’d spent much of his time since yesterday psyching himself up for that eventual moment, but he hadn’t been preparing for this happening so soon. He pulled at the chains and tried to slip out of the shackles, but it was no use. Steady, lighter footfalls now sounded from the stairs. Aerin locked his fists around the chains.

Then, out of the dim passageway that led to the outside world, emerged the girl, dressed all in white.

_What is this about._

He’d seen her before, he realized. She’d been in the courtyard when they brought him in. Judging from her clothes, jewellery, and just the way she carried herself, she was some big shot around here. Was she going to be his interrogator? Was this some sort of a trick? A good jailer routine maybe? Were they going to make this first interrogation nice and hope he talks out of sheer relief and gratitude? He now watched her enter the cell with rising anger. If that’s the case, they must think he’s an absolute idiot.

She was amused to find him chained melodramatically to the ceiling, hands helplessly overhead. This was some excellent dungeon flair. She also noted that his cell windows did, indeed, open to the garden.

She came in and stopped some three feet in front of him. He was looking at her with hostile pale eyes. With relief she saw that she hadn’t been mistaken. The boy was in fact really cute, even correcting for her isolation-induced low standards and despite all the dirt on his skin. She squinted at him and threw her chin up.

“So, you’re the Kontarian prisoner, then?”

He inclined his head and jingled his chains. “Me? No. You must be confusing me with someone else.”

Well then.

She had been fairly sure that she was going to find an impressionable forest dipshit down here, and in her triumph over having engineered this meeting she hadn’t quite expected him to talk back to her. She smiled, with one corner of her mouth.

“You always chat shit at people you’ve just met?” she asked.

Now this wasn’t exactly the sort of a conversational turn that he’d expect of Harmeni nobility, though admittedly he had very little experience in this field. He took a better look at her. She must have been his age more or less, very pretty and with hair reaching past her shoulders that matched in colour her golden jewellery. Still, she had that expression about her like she was constantly judging you to fall short of some measure, that way her front teeth showed in her catty smile, a mocking twinkle in her eyes. Her eyes. What’s that colour; blue, but a lot darker than his own? Sapphire, or someshit.

He rallied whatever pride the situation was allowing him to. He looked to the ceiling and shrugged.

“I’m Princess Gabrielle. Of Lhamedos,” she added with emphasis.

“Of where?”

She paused. “I’m a princess of royal blood, is the point. And you are?”

“Well, I’m Aerin. Of the first Kontarian village from the west. My house is the third on the right behind that one spruce tree. I watch over horses and stuff.” She smiled wider. His attempts to banter her out of the cell were promising to be more fun than she had from a conversation in a long while. “So,” he went on, “what are you doing here?”

Now that was an excellent question.

“I’ve come to examine you,” she said, scanning him from toetips to fingertips. “They say you tried to nick Titulus’s banner.”

“Yeah, well, what of it?”

“Why did you do that?”

He blushed and looked sideways. “None of your business why.” Ha. There, she had him.

“I bet you thought that stunt was gonna make you the coolest guy in all of Kontaria.” He didn’t respond. “I bet you fancy yourself craftier than Titulus himself.”

“Look, I don’t know what do you want but I’m not telling you anything. And if that neckless piece of shit didn’t want anyone to touch his banner then maybe he shouldn’t have dragged it into our fucking forest!” To his confusion, she brightened up and laughed at this. It wasn’t even that “neckless piece of shit” was a superb insult by itself; it just felt great to finally meet someone who shared her opinion on Titulus.

“Watch your mouth, boy. You might end up insulting someone important.”

He didn’t pick up on this, and just lowered his head. “Well, I’m done talking with you, so no worries.”

She should have guessed that he’d be too down to be much fun. Very few people in his situation would make good company. He needed some picking up.

“Oh don’t be so melodramatic. In a week or two they’ll wrap up this stupid war and they’ll let you go.”

She immediately regretted saying that. Aerin looked up at her, and just for a briefest moment – before he controlled himself and assumed a nonplussed expression – she saw in his eyes a sudden desperate hope, a sort of pleading for her words to be true. They weren’t. Kontaria might well defend itself, but the boy, for disrespecting the King’s Eagle, must surely die. And though he visibly did his best to bury this hope, there was no doubt from his fidgeting movements and sudden talkativeness that she got his heart to beat faster.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m glad you’re here to sort out the war. I’m sure that one word from you and it will all end well.”

“Maybe. How did you go from watching over horses to sneaking around Titulus anyway?”

“It’s wartime, genius. We get called to warbands.”

“So you were in a warband?”

“Yeah,” he lied. “I’m a warrior.”

“You were not at the battle, though?”

“Well someone needs to scout, no? They'd have me at the battle but I'm just very good at scouting, for your information.”

“I'd hate to see how the bad scouts end up, then.”

“Obviously they can face a fate no worse than talking to you, Gabrielle.”

She leered and replied nothing but moved from her place and circled around him. How odd, to be addressed by her first name. When you’re introduced to a Princess Gabrielle, it’s the Princess part that you’re supposed to pay attention to, and title accordingly. Well, but what can woods weirdos know about protocol.

His rags were very worn out and his right sleeve was half torn away, leaving a large hole through which she could see from behind the exposed side of his chest; ribs and muscles moving as he breathed. He had just the sort of lean neat body that she had imagined. She stood there staring intently at his naked skin, letting her imagination fly.

Unaware of that, he pored over the conversation so far. Her words about Kontaria winning the war and about his eventual freedom… yeah, they seemed to confirm his first thought – she was sent here to gain his trust, with feigned sympathy and false hope. But why then was she mostly mocking him? What was her deal? Why did his captors send her here?

“So what are you doing in Behem?” he asked.

“What?”

He arched back his neck to look at her. “I said, what are you doing in Behem? If you’re not from here.”

She hesitated.

“I’m completing my education here. A famous place of learning, Behem.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, exceptional,” she said, walking back in front of him.

“More exceptional than your capital? Are you sure you’re a real royal?”

He must have touched a sore point, because the girl bristled. She pointed to her necklace. “You see that? A royal eagle. My father is the King’s own cousin. I don’t see how you could know anything about real royal blood, horse boy.”

He squinted at the necklace. Indeed, that was a royal eagle, that fucking bastard of a bird that had got him into this. Unlike the gilded one on the banner, though, this one was made of solid gold. And as the banner one was displayed on the background of royal colours, this one was exhibited against Gabrielle’s skin, the bit that was left to see out of the high cut of her dress: a small rectangle of the top of her chest, exposing the tips of her collarbones (currently rising in indignation). He suddenly thought that it was a great pity that the garment was so unrevealing. At least it was well fitted, allowing him to see the shape of her body. She had nice breasts, he thought. Nicely proportioned, not too large, probably fun and bouncy like that girl’s, under the tree, when the warband went to battle…

He barely had time to consider all of this, when, to his dread, he realized that his cock was beginning to swell. He also realized that the only thing keeping it hidden from her was one thin layer of coarse, worn-out fabric. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Pipe down, boy. He tried to focus on the chains and the cell. What were they talking about, again?

“Alright, whatever you say,” he tried. With every heartbeat, his cock was getting heavier, crawling down the side of his inner thigh. Fucks sakes, don’t look at her. Think of shovelling horseshit.

“You’re damn right,” she replied. He’s suddenly started acting different. What’s he up to?

Here, however, her thoughts were interrupted. From the gatehouse came two short horn sounds. This, she knew, was the signal that Paula was approaching the gate. Damn that woman.

Aerin did not know what the signal meant, and didn’t care. His cock expanded triumphantly and detached itself from his thigh, pressing against the fabric of his rags, and apparently intrigued by the rough sensation on its many nerve endings, it went on and pressed harder, and harder…

Gabrielle spoke, annoyed. “Alright, I can see that you won’t be of any use to me. Goodbye, then.”

“Yeah,” he said quickly, shifting on his legs, “was a pleasure meeting you. Bye!”

He seemed to avoid meeting her eyes. He half-turned himself away.

She noticed.

Clearly outlined, pressing against the front of his pants, size and girth just perfect to stuff your mouth with. She stood motionless for a moment, though her heart beat hard and her tongue found itself suddenly sinking in drool. Touch it, something in her head insisted. Pull off his trousers, see it, touch it!

Paula would enter the castle any minute now, and once she does, sneaking out of the dungeon unnoticed will be very difficult. In this moment, Gabrielle hated her ladyship more than ever before.

Very suddenly, she moved right next to the boy and looked him in the face. “I’d like to chat some more, Aerin, but that horn means I gotta go. See, I can’t stay here with you when there’s so much horniness.” She reached out and ruffled his hair, smiled brightly, and in the next instant she was gone.

Dodo soon came down and repeated in reverse the complicated procedure with manacles, somewhat puzzled why was his prisoner intent on either turning his back on him or assuming a crouching position. Maybe he’s getting crazy, Dodo thought. Dodo had heard that it happens to some people.

When Aerin was finally left alone, he dropped on his straw bedding and rescued his penis from the chafing jute trousers. Free at last, it throbbed enthusiastically, pointing to the ceiling. He tried it between two fingers. It was as rock-solid as the surrounding dungeon.

He closed his eyes and blushed violently. She had noticed for sure. There was no way that this wasn’t an intentional pun that she had left him with. Aerin, you mug.

He recalled her eyes, her body, and the sensation of her hand in his hair. His cock swayed to his heartbeat. He looked at it judgementally and poked its head with his index finger.

“Don’t you dare fall for the creepy princess,” he instructed. “Don’t even think about it.”


	15. Something Nice

Gabrielle rushed up the stairs and into Dodo’s room. Through the open entry door she could see the gatehouse. Paula hadn’t gone in yet, but a small assortment of servants was already gathered to help her off the horse and provide refreshments. Okay then, it’s safe.

“Thank you, Dodo, I’m done with the prisoner,” she said, and stepped outside. She took off all the jewellery she was wearing and stowed it away – it had done a good job propping up her royal authority, but surely would look suspicious to Paula. She dallied there in front of the tower as the lady and her entourage rode in, dismounted, and eventually dissipated into either the guardhouse or the inner courtyard. It was a pleasant day for riding, Gabrielle thought, somewhat overcast and refreshing. Why couldn’t they have kept away for an hour more? When Paula was home, there was always a chance she’d call for her on a whim, and in that case the servant sent to fetch her must not find her anywhere irregular. Her talk with Aerin was definitely over.

On the other hand, what good would an hour more have done? Surely they could not have put that cock to a good use with Dodo around. And it’s not like the boy was actually in the mood, anyway. It was just a reflex, an animal response beyond his control.

Still, she would have liked to see that thing, maybe feel it, and the opportunity was gone for good now. Dodo had been very hesitant to let her in, and she was pretty sure he’d bring this up with Clement if she ever tried again.

As she was considering all that, a boy servant came from the kitchen bearing two tin bowls and a loaf of bread, bowed to her awkwardly, and called out to Dodo. The giant guard invited him in and the bowls were laid on the table. The servant, having then additionally presented Dodo with the bread, went away.

The bowls contained steaming, watery groats. Gabrielle watched the two sullen brownish piles. “You eat the same food as the prisoner?”

“Yes, your worship.”

“This doesn’t look very tasty.”

“Grub was better when I worked at the kennels,” he admitted, with a touch of sadness.

“It shouldn’t be like this.”

Now Dodo looked at her with confusion. “But your worship! Clement organized it this way. Surely it’s for the best!”

Of course.

As she walked across the courtyard heading towards the inner gate she recalled that hope that flickered in Aerin’s eyes, before he suppressed it, when she told him he wouldn’t die. She cursed under her breath. In a couple weeks Titulus will come and paint those dungeon walls with the boy’s blood, and that will be it. She shouldn’t have played with him like that. But what’s done is done; it was beyond her to help him in any way. If she appealed to Paula to let him go, the awful woman would probably order him chained to a wall in a deeper cell still. There was nothing to be done.

She was by the inner gate then, and this is when she noticed Father Pelagius crossing the courtyard on a route perpendicular to hers, going from the chapel to the kitchens, walking sprightly and humming an upbeat tune.

Hold on. Maybe there was at least one little thing she could do for Aerin.

Pelagius was always in a great mood when visiting the kitchens. He knew all the cooks and servants on first name basis and was on excellent terms with them – as luck would have it, they were a very pious bunch, and deferred to him greatly. There he could stay for a long time, in warmth and delicious smells, in mild light reflected off copper pots, surrounded by ovens, bunches of herbs, drying meats and stewing vegetables, discussing food and religion, his two favourite subjects. As far as he was concerned, the Behem kitchens were a visible sign of the gods’ benevolence to mankind.

He was in an especially good mood today as he oversaw all the lambs, fowls, pies and sauces being prepared for his personal use. The midsummer festive season was fast approaching, and at this time good food was always the most bountiful.

“I tell you that you make the best midsummer honey cakes in the world, Gunnhild,” he said to a laughing elderly cook. “No, really. I thought nothing could top the ones I remember from my childhood, but yours are just perfect. Truly, it’s the gods’ gift to you. And I see we got the shellfish delivered. I must say that though I dislike the sea, I like its fruits. What’s better than to enjoy them here on solid land, where the air is still? The cisterns of Behem have quite enough water for anyone. Let us have no meandering, I say.”

He paused as the door opened behind him; Gabrielle walked onto the reddish flagstones of the kitchen floor, prompting a wave of curtsies and bows. Pelagius beamed.

“Ah, child! You’ve finished your lessons, then?”

“Yes, Father. They were very instructive.”

“Hard?”

“Excuse me?”

“The lessons.”

“Oh. No, not very.”

“And how could they be for you. Such a bright young lady.” He turned his massive head to a cauldron and lifted the lid. “The duck stock is looking perfect. What excellent ducks we have around Behem, truly a credit to all the duck race.”

Gabrielle took a look at the pile of assorted meats and veggies stacked on the table by Pelagius. “Is this food for you, Father?”

“For me and the boys,” Pelagius smiled. “I like to oversee the preparations.”

Gabrielle leaned on the table. “Father, I wanted to talk to you about the holy texts that you gave me to read. A recent one is troubling my mind.”

Pelagius raised his eyebrows, over the ladleful of stock he was tasting. “Indeed?”

“Yes, there was the tale of blessed Duke Joris. The one that, when famine came, opened his larders to his peasants, and himself lived on acorns and stale bread all the way to the next harvest.” The cooks milled about them, keen to hear the priest pontificate.

“A truly holy man. Charity is one of the greatest virtues, child. What troubles you about this?”

“It’s just, I’d like to follow his example, but I cannot. There’s this loyal man, Dodo, and there’s his prisoner – who’s a prisoner of war, really, not some murderer or traitor – and they’re stuck in that tower all day, with only groats and bread to eat.”

“Yes, most unfortunate.”

“I’d share my own food with them, like Joris had, but I eat from the Great Hall’s supplies, at Lady Paula’s table! And surely I cannot demand of her to share her own food with people so low, what with her working tirelessly for the realm all the time…”

“No, it would certainly be presumptuous of you to request such a thing,” said Pelagius, submerging the ladle back in the stock. The grey metal turned a thin gold, and then a rich brown, as it sank deeper, tiny bits of chopped parsley dancing around it.

“I guess I have to bear this, then. If only I had any say over my own food, I’d surely do the right thing.” She looked to the floor with the appropriate degree of sadness. There was a compassionate “oh” from the old cook. Pelagius, meanwhile, froze with the ladle halfway back to his mouth. Some of the kitchen staff stopped whatever they were doing and were glancing at him. He looked to his pile of finest supplies. A small plucked quail stared back at him, with an accusatory expression on its beak.

Gabrielle bit her lip not to smile. She’d set up this battle of pride and gluttony just right. Pride had the support of a dozen deferential servants, waiting for Pelagius’s reaction. Gluttony was severely outnumbered.

At length, the venerable priest slurped his stock and addressed the kitchen at large. “It’s funny that you should mention that, because this is what I really came here today to request. I wish that all this splendid food goes to Dodo and his prisoner, while we at the chapel feed on groats for as long as they remain in the tower. Let nobody think that the servants of the gods in Behem don’t put to practice the things they preach!”

The cooks and the servants issued calls of absolute delight at this holy man. Gabrielle joined in and Pelagius blessed them with a benevolent wrinkly smile, and his bald head shone with goodness and piety. The spectacle must have almost made up for the lost food to him.

A short time later Gabrielle was walking towards the inner courtyard with a lot more verve than before. Before she passed the gate, she noted the castle’s bath house by the inner wall, and on an impulse swerved towards it.

The bath house’s supervisor was a plump short and amply moustachioed man who never had too much work to do between the morning and the evening, when all the soldiers came here to clean themselves, and so was in the process of playing dice with his attendant when the door suddenly flung open and the princess butted in.

“Are you in charge of this place?”

The supervisor dropped his dice, which scattered in all directions on the floor.

“Y-yes, your ladyship!”

“Do you supply water to the dungeon?”

“Y-yes, we send Dodo a bucketful, just like Clement instructed—”

“Don’t you know how unhealthy grime is? What do you think Titulus will say if his valuable prisoner gets sick and dies? You got to think about things like that, man!”

And before he had any chance to respond she walked out, slamming the door behind her.


	16. A Logical Explanation

He had a new task to occupy himself with at least, and that was to persuade his attraction to that blond menace out of his own mind.

She was a trick. She was not to be believed.

Calm down.

Aerin sat in his corner and tried to think. The groats that they fed him always seemed to leave him hungrier after eating than before.

She claimed that she was a princess. Gabrielle. A pretty name. Shut up. He tried again to guess what was her purpose. She was only with him for a very short time, and went away as soon as the horn sounded. Maybe she wasn’t sent here at all, but came secretly on her own out of curiosity? But then again, maybe they arranged this talk and these horns this way, just to make him think that and gain his trust? He spent several hours overthinking this at every possible angle.

Gotta face the truth, he figured. All hope is fake at this point. It’s just… I don’t want to die. I’m starting to wish I was never alive in the first place.

At some point towards the evening, he heard the door to Dodo’s room open, and him talk with someone. The narrow passageway with the staircase was not facing the cell directly, but opened on the wall perpendicular to its grating, and furthermore there was the door at its top – this prevented Aerin from ever hearing any actual words. He remained seated. Soon afterwards the outside door shut, the stairway door opened, and Dodo’s quick steps echoed under the vaults. The man himself then appeared, grinning, and bearing a bowl and a mug.

“Food!” he announced, and shoved the things in, across the floor between the bars.

“What, again?”

Dodo grinned even wider. The smell reached Aerin. What the hell, roast meat?

As Dodo trundled back upstairs, Aerin inspected the bowl. Roast meat, alright. And lentils, and root vegetables, and sauce. A very generous portion, and a mug of ale to boot.

Alright, what is this. What, is, this. What games are they playing, exactly? What sort of elaborate mental torture have they planned?

His stomach kindly but firmly communicated to his brain that it was free to consider all these fine details at its leisure but, perhaps, this could wait until after the meal?

Minutes later he was lying on his back on the bedding, hurting from having eaten too fast. It was getting dim outside, and he still had no idea what to think.

The entry door opened again, and a different voice conferred with Dodo. Minutes later, the jailer appeared again, with a pair of manacles, and demanded that Aerin come to the bars to be chained to them.

As Dodo clasped one fetter around his wrist, the other around the bar, and disappeared in the stairway, Aerin braced himself. Now he’ll find out what’s the meaning of all this. Now they’ll come and do something awful to him, just at the moment he had his tiny bit of contentment, and break his spirit that way… Dodo’s steps were on the stairs again, heavy and careful. Oh, fuck. What is he bringing here, some torture device?

The thing turned out to be a very large wooden bowl, from which Dodo occasionally splashed out some steaming water. He also carried some bundle tucked under his arm. He put the bowl and the bundle on the floor, opened the door, brought the things into the cell, locked the door again on his way out, and finally unlocked the fetter on Aerin’s wrist.

“Bath,” he explained indifferently, and disappeared upstairs.

Aerin didn’t move for a minute. Then, very carefully, he approached the bowl.

It was regular hot water, alright. The bundle next to it amounted to some grey soap, a rag to be used as a towel, and a pile of green hazel and mint such as was commonly used to clean your teeth. This kind of service was usually offered only by the more upmarket sort of inns.

Aerin looked at his reflection in the water. Hot steam was condensing on his face.

Maybe there was another logical explanation which he hadn’t considered, he thought. Maybe everyone in this castle was simply completely fucking crazy.


	17. Dog Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Traditionally, dog days are the hot period that only begins some weeks after midsummer. This non-seasonal chapter title is dedicated to June 2019 and its prolonged heatwave shenanigans.

And now, the fronts have changed. The clouds have dispersed and the sun alone made its rounds, high overhead, heating the earth with only the briefest pauses allowed for the short June nights, when the bushes lit up with fireflies. Peasants in the fields and tradesmen in the cities moved slowly now and sought shadow all day long. In the evenings, they met together and talked and listened to music, and from the remotest corners of their houses they retrieved garlands and paper lanterns and festive clothes. Midsummer was at hand.

Some last safe havens for cool air persisted in the Behem Castle dungeons, where it pooled close to the floor and waited for better times. Aerin rather enjoyed it; still, he’d have given much to see the sky or the sun, at least for a moment. The stone ceiling above him was unmovable, forever unchanging, like a lid of a coffin. From the windows he could only see the chapel wall. Around noon, sunlight on the grass in the garden would move so close to the tower walls that it was almost in his reach. He would try to pull himself up to the grille and extend his entire arm, right to the shoulder, between the bars and out towards the edge of the window’s niche. It was no use; the sunny area remained always inches away from his fingertips, and as the noon passed, it crept back away from him, and he forever remained in the shadow.

The baffling food and bathwater kept coming, like to a guest of honour. If he still wondered about them, it was out of boredom rather than of any hope of solving the mystery. And although he consciously refused to believe Gabrielle’s words – the war will end, they will let you go – they stuck somewhere to the bottom of his mind, and he kept quietly repeating them, in secret from himself. The girl herself never returned.

One evening Clement, while going to the armoury on some business, stopped by the door to the dungeon. Some enticing smell was coming from within. He knocked and peeked inside.

Dodo was at the table, finishing a lamb chop. A second one was still on his plate, and from the looks of it, it was rather carefully prepared, herbs and all.

“Dodo, where did you get this from?”

“Evening, your lordship. Father Pelagius ordered this sent here!”

“Pelagius? Dodo, don’t fool around. Seriously, where did you get this from?”

“It’s true, your lordship! I swear!”

Clement gave him a good long look. Dodo’s face was honest, incapable of covering any lie. Also, it seemed rather cleaner than usual. Clement scowled.

After finishing his business at the armoury, he went by the kitchens.

“Yes sir, some days ago Father Pelagius himself told us to send his food to the dungeon instead. Isn’t this wonderful of him? Truly, he is a holy man!”

Clement muttered his assent to the cook and went back to the courtyard. He looked to the chapel, its windows lit in the dusk. It worried him when people did unexpected things. What was the old man playing at? Was he trying to show off his piety to the servants? Trying to curry favour with Dodo? Was he hiding something? Planning something? Or maybe he’d finally lost his marble?

Clement tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He’d need to find out what’s going on here.

Sunlight went away and then, in five or so hours, returned; Gabrielle woke up early, let Mista wash her, and went down for breakfast. For the last few days, she breakfasted in the Great Hall together with Paula – the reason for this being, Father Pelagius had suddenly and inexplicably taken up the habit of coming over for meals. Paula was well pleased with that. She liked to have someone around to talk religion with.

It was the day before the Midsummer Festival. The festival, celebrated on the last new moon before midsummer itself, others may see primarily as an opportunity to enjoy themselves. But Paula was well aware that it was first and foremost a holy day of the gods, who on that day send their favour to their faithful, soothing woes and reversing misfortunes. And even she had to admit that there were some misfortunes in urgent need of reversing.

Worrying news were coming from Redona, indifferent ones from Kontaria. The Redonians have managed to halt Harmeni offensive in a series of surprisingly bloody battles, and were now threatening to break into Harmeni territory itself. The armies of Harmen were regrouping, dusty and less certain than before, and the King himself saw the need to take over direct command.

As for Kontaria, Titulus picked himself up quickly, reorganized, and went back into the forest, but in it he was wandering aimlessly. The Kontarians, having inflicted one defeat on that rainy night, now seemed content to just watch him move and slowly eat up his diminished supplies. If he couldn’t figure out a way to force them into battle, he’d have to soon retreat and resupply, prolonging the campaign for more precious weeks, even an he and his troops were now increasingly missed in the south.

Thus Pelagius’s presence was a great relief to Paula. The old priest in the Great Hall did not speak of charity and mildness as he would in the kitchens; here, he talked of fire and righteous fury.

“The gods always punish the transgressors in the end, my lady,” he said, helping himself to more salmon pâté. “We just need to be patient.”

“That they do, father, that they do,” she replied, more shrill than usual. “Our enemies will rot in hell before the summer’s out, mark my words. The midsummer will be when the tide turns.”

Jovin and Nicetas, the two injured cavalrymen now co-opted to the regular breakfast company, nodded but looked pensive.

“It will be a beautiful celebration tomorrow, my lady. I’m sure the god of war will listen to your prayers, and the townsfolk’s.”

“Oh, the townsfolk don’t care. They just want to get drunk and dance, the rabble. Still, I’ll have to be down there with them, it would be unseemly of me not to. You’ll take good care of the castle, won’t you, father?”

Pelagius put his palms flat together. “I will surely not let it collapse overnight.”

Paula snorted. “I am glad to hear it. I’d like to stay here too, but I have prayers to address to the god of war, and he likes noise. Perhaps you who stay behind can dedicate your prayers to some other gods. Such as Domalba.”

Gabrielle did all in her power not to move a muscle. These last words were meant for her. Another one of Paula’s dick moves – the biggest festival of the year, when everyone from the poorest peasant to the King himself parties out until the sun’s up, and she gets to be locked in the castle with a bunch of monks and guards. She glanced to the top of Her Ladyship’s pointy head. I will strangle you in your sleep, she thought.

All day she spent in the dim chamber of the chapel with her head in her hands, rubbing her temples as Vulmar, Adhemar and Valdemar rambled around her about inane bullshit. In the afternoon, she hid in her chamber, from which she emerged only when the evening finally brought some relief from the heat.

She strolled about the outer courtyard as the sky slowly darkened. The air smelled of junipers, and the cicadas were singing at a full volume. They used to do that a lot in the capital too, she thought. On summer nights like this, when you could take long rides along the river, in a good company.

A cart parked by the stables caught her attention. It was light, two-wheeled, covered with thick cloth. She walked by to have a closer look. Loaded on it were bundles of tightly packed colourful material, tied to sticks. Fireworks! Even in this gods-forsaken Paula-infested shithole they’re gonna have a full fireworks show tomorrow, get hammered, and dance the night away!

She climbed the wall and walked north, where she ascended a turret that overlooked the inner courtyard. From here, if she looked outside, she could see the town of the plain, its lights coming by degrees to life. Better yet, if she leaned out of the crenellations a bit, she could not see the castle.

Mista found her there.

“When should I serve your supper, my lady?”

Gabrielle didn’t turn back. “In an hour or whatever. I want to stay here for a while.” She leaned with her chin on her hands, but sensed that Mista was still hovering behind her. “Anything else?”

“Are we going to the town for the festival tomorrow?”

Oh, that. “I’m not allowed. But you can go if you want, I’ll manage.”

To her credit, Mista tried to make it sound like no big deal. With a quick thanks, she disappeared downstairs.

Gabrielle looked to the sky. It was a bit too early for the first stars yet. Swallows were circling over her, swerving wildly in their flight and issuing high-pitched calls among themselves. Seriously, how fucked up is it that she can allow Mista to go from the castle, but she herself is stuck here?!

She wondered if any of her friends at the capital is remembering her or will spare her a thought, wonder how she’s doing. She’d never know; they would be forbidden from contacting her. And so, while everyone else in the castle, even the lowest servants, is free to come and go as they please, she will have to sit and stew with her thoughts of loneliness!

Well, not everyone else. There was the boy in the dungeon, the only person who seemed to share her opinions on the place. It felt good to improve his life here a bit, she even felt actually royal doing that, but this didn’t change the fact that he was very soon going to die, in pain and even more abandoned than she was, and leave her in here all alone again.

She touched her forehead to the battlements and rolled her head on the warm stone. This place is going to drive me crazy. Fucking gods, do something.


	18. Or,

Everyone indeed who only could started leaving the castle for the city the next morning. Servants and workers, who had to walk the three miles on foot, went early to beat the midday sun. All were dressed in their best garbs, a crowd gleaming blue and red and yellow, some carrying flutes or guitars, everyone talking over everyone else. By afternoon, the castle was almost completely empty, save for a small group of soldiers necessary to watch the walls, the monks of the chapel, and maybe twenty other people whom their jobs or a particular lack of festive spirit kept confined within the walls. Late in the afternoon, Paula herself rode off with Clement, leaving the castle under Pelagius’s command. The venerable father, his three understudies, and Princess Gabrielle watched the gate shut after her ladyship’s escort.

“Well!” said Pelagius, rubbing his hands together, “Dinner and a little midsummer ceremony at the chapel in two hours, then. See you there!”

The afternoon dragged on, the air heavy and still upon the earth and Gabrielle lying on her bed, simmering in heat and frustration, determined not to think about her situation anymore. As the hour turned late the heat let off a little. At the appointed time, she got up and dragged herself towards the chapel.

The hallways of the Great Hall were deserted; there was nobody but an elderly servant downstairs, and her steps echoed as she descended the great stone stairway. There was nobody in the inner courtyard; there was always supposed to be a guard at the inner gate, but he must have wandered off somewhere. Muffled tones of a guitar were reaching her from one of the half-timbered lodges by the walls.

Not many people were in the outer courtyard either. Five or six ox carts were parked by the larder, although their drivers were nowhere to be seen. These Gabrielle knew to be loaded with supplies for the border forts; they would leave for them the morning after next, as they always did, every ten days like clockwork, festival or not.

Near the chapel she passed three soldiers. They paid her no attention, but were lost in an animated conversation. She caught a snippet. “…no I’m telling you, the dude can drink an entire bucket of wine in one sitting and…” They were fairly drunk, and she thought that this was a good concept. After the dinner and the ceremony, she’ll raid the Great Hall cellar and get shitfaced by herself on the battlements, watching the fireworks from above. It will be almost like a party.

Pelagius took full advantage of nobody looking and appropriated the finest cold dishes from the larder, assembling a dinner fit for the King himself. He took it upon himself to entertain everyone with his favourite anecdotes, gathered over forty years of priesthood. Some of them, like the one about the penitent eggplant farmer, were actually pretty good.

The ceremony afterwards, however, dragged on infinitely. They went to the chapel’s nave, a great room with a marble floor and pointed lancet windows, stout columns supporting its far-away ceiling, a room which amplified and echoed even the smallest sound made within. Along the walls stood carved stone statues of the gods, looking indifferently down on any humans that might be passing, and Pelagius lit a candle for every god in the pantheon, and the three monks intoned a separate hymn for every candle. In the end, they were left with thirty six candles burning in front of thirty six effigies. Even Vulmar, Adhemar and Valdemar were singing through yawns by the end. This work well done, the four men retired to their rooms, and Gabrielle was finally free to go.

She walked outside, leaned against the oaken chapel door, and exhaled heavily. The stars were already out, and the pleasant cool air was alive with the usual cicada noise. Somewhere, someone was drunkenly singing a song. Several windows in various castle buildings were lit, but in general it was difficult to even make out the walls and the turrets against the sky – it was, after all, the night of the new moon before Midsummer. Kicking out with her feet, she started along the path to begin her quest for wine.

To her left, in some distance, the gatehouse was well lit. There she knew the men were sober as swine. Walking on, she also noticed that a candle was still burning in Dodo’s room, and that the front door was left ajar. Curious, she went over there and peeked inside.

The candle was nearly burned out on the table, tallow trickling from its stone stand onto the wood. Sitting propped against the wall was Dodo, snoring quietly, with an empty bucket by his side. Gabrielle leaned down and examined it; it was stained with dark red residue. She laughed to herself. That crazy bastard was actually capable of drinking a full bucket in one sitting! The soldiers she had passed earlier must have talked him into doing this. She tapped on his forehead with her knuckles. It didn’t even change the rhythm of his snoring.

She straightened up and looked to the door to the dungeons. Aerin! A new prospect for the night opened. Maybe she’ll bring some wine down there and get him to talk shit about all of Harmen.

Or, a more practical bit of her brain piped up, if he lets you chain him down safely enough, you two could fuck.

Cicadas sang. Dodo snored.

She leaned on the table and stared hard into the candle’s flame. You did not just think that for serious, she insisted. She could hear her heart bang inside her. Serious. Dead serious. Yes. This is perfect. There’s literally nothing in the way.

No. No no no no no, nope. She rushed outside. This was too risky, if anyone caught her she’d probably end up in a convent for life, it would be just beyond all reason.

The courtyard was still only filled with starshine. A dog barked in the kennels by the opposite wall. Come on. There’s nobody around. You’re stuck here, who knows for how long. When will you even have a chance to have sex again?

She walked forward a few steps. No. There’s no way he’ll be up for it!

You can’t know that if you don’t ask.

What if she gets pregnant? How would she explain that to Paula?

You know where Mista’s stash of silphium tea is. That will take care of that.

She stopped. She shifted her weight from heels to toes and back a few times. She opened her eyes wide. Her whole body was jittering a little.

She turned around, found herself in Dodo’s room, closed the front door firmly behind her, grabbed a pair of fetters on a long chain, lit a torch off the candle, and rushed down the stairs.


	19. The Sky Upside Down

Aerin lay awake. There had been some unusual commotion outside throughout the day, upbeat songs and music. Some people had even visited Dodo and for more than an hour they had laughed and talked very loud. Only when the night came did the noises start to die down.

He counted the days he’d been locked up. It was now just before midsummer. He correctly guessed that this was the reason for the festivities. How strange it was, to hear carefree people enjoying themselves while he was here, underground, distressed and alone. How can such different states of mind even exist in the same world, let alone in the same place and time? This overheard cheerfulness made him feel more isolated than the stone walls and iron bars ever could.

He lay down on his bedding and idly poked at the mossy mortar between the bricks, his thoughts beginning to wander off to far-away places, when the door upstairs suddenly opened.

He sat up.

There were footsteps on the stairs. Torchlight got in from the passageway and within it he saw someone’s shadow, a silhouette on the limestone. Then into the corridor came the girl herself, Princess Gabrielle, short of breath and apparently agitated, a pair of manacles swaying heavily in her hand. She looked around, installed the torch in a grip carved in the wall opposite the cell, and turned to face him.

“You aren’t asleep yet?”

He made a gesture with his hand vaguely indicating his upright position, all while wondering what fresh hell was this.

“Good.” She hurled the manacles up over a horizontal bar of the cell’s grating, so that they hung about a foot above her head. Startled by metal clanging loudly on metal she glanced towards the stairway and stood still for a minute. Eventually, she faced him again.

“Okay,” she paused, and licked her lips. “Take off your clothes and put your hands in the fetters.”

What. “What?”

She was breathing unevenly. She grabbed at the grating and leaned on it. With the torch burning behind her, her hair shone like gold around her head, and her blue eyes seemed almost black, locked on his and in some trancelike state. “Aerin,” she said. “Do you want to fuck me or not?”

Well then.

He got up, a little unsteady. She… was into him? That would actually explain all the weird shit that was happening. But this was a ridiculous thing to consider, wasn’t it? This is a trap of some sorts. He mustn’t walk into it. Hasn’t he learned the lesson not to go for dangerous things?

He stared into her eyes. He took several steps forward. Fucks sake. Is this what a moth feels when it sees candlelight? He was barely breathing. His blood felt hot in his veins. If the girl told him to grab that torch by its flaming head he’d probably do it.

He walked under the manacles. She stepped away from the bars, still watching, tense and attentive. He grabbed at his shirt, turned around with nonsensical bashfulness, and pulled the material over his head. This felt like dismantling defences before an oncoming enemy, yet also like a liberation. There was no going back now. He took off his trousers and kicked them away. He lifted his hands to the fetters. With his entire skin, he only felt cool air.

As he stripped, she bit at her mouth so hard her teeth almost crushed her lips. He went for it. He actually went for it. Holy shit, they were gonna do it. She’s gonna fuck a Kontarian prisoner. Reality fuzzed a little. Her brain split evenly between an unrestrained joy and a profound dread. You’re gonna get caught, you idiot! No matter. No matter. She tapped at her dress and found the key. She approached him cautiously – what if he’s just trying to trap her? Maybe he’ll try to seize the moment, herself, and the cell key? She proceeded with utmost attention, ready to jump back at the slightest twitch of his muscles – but he stood still.

The key was pretty small and she actually found it hard to jam it into the keyhole of the manacles, them overhead and her hands refusing to cease their jittering. She began with his right arm, clasping the iron over his wrist – which was still bruised where he had struggled against the ropes on his way here – she hoped it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable – the lock mechanism resisted the turning key, but eventually something clicked – the fetter was secure – oh fuck, oh fuck – she repeated this with his left – another bruise, another click – and it was all done, all ready. She exhaled and took a step back.

He stood there, with his back to her and to the grating, his hands now made harmless, hanging several inches above his head. Torchlight danced uneven on his back. He looked great from behind, muscles tense across his shoulder blades, others rising in slender columns along the curve of his spine, dimples at the small of his back, a wonderfully slappable ass. What she came here for, though, was on the other side. She strode and unlocked the door and entered the cell.

There it goes, he thought. He was powerless, naked, and his cock was getting hard, a very visible sign of his sincere desire for her. She went in front of him and looked at him, all of him. Yep, this is me. If you’re actually here just to mock me, then I’ve served myself on a silver platter. If there’s a whole bunch of torturers you’re hiding upstairs they can barge right in.

She reached for the straps of her dress and started to untie them.

Oh, okay, he thought, tensing. _Okay._

He is gorgeous, she thought, fingers fumbling on the straps and breath racing faster still. His light eyes were fixed on her. His body was lean and fit, the muscles of his chest drawn up by his arms bound overhead, his ribs revealed in the half-shadow with each nervous intake of air, his abs in turns flexing and relaxing gently. Between his legs, his beautiful Kontarian cock was rising through the air, heartbeat by heartbeat. She finally defeated all the straps, clasps, belts, and freed herself of her dress. With movements dreamlike and detached yet decisive, she took off her underwear and stood naked before him.

This was, he thought, the most spectacular sight he’d ever seen. The body she exposed before him was splendid; her perky firm breasts in perfect proportion with her slender frame, nipples hard in the cool air; her flat hard stomach, toned from years of horse riding, framed with shadowy pits where its muscles gently receded before her flanks and hips; the girly curves of the hips themselves; the expanse of smooth skin at her thighs; the narrow groomed strip of dark pubic hair; the soft cleft below. He swallowed, and gripped his chains.

She ran her hands across her breasts and abdomen. She didn’t need him to tell her that he liked what he was seeing. His cock was hard, tense in the air, pointing right at her, pulsing and taut under pressure. She smiled and turned a bit, to give him a good look anywhere he wanted. She’d missed this so much, that feeling of a guy’s eyes skimming through her naked skin.

Then she caught eye contact with him, blushed, and looked back down to his body. This surprised her. Why was she delighted with him staring at her naked, but suddenly shy to look him in the eye?

Anyway, enough of this.

She walked over to him. She put her hands on his chest. His skin was burning, and his heart pounded against the inside of her palm. She moved her hands down, taking time to press at his abs with her fingertips, and finally rested them on his hips. So smooth, so firm. It’s like the gods created him specifically to turn her on.

She drew her left forearm around his neck and with her right hand grasped the grille behind him and lifted herself, putting her feet on a horizontal bar several inches off the ground, on either side of his legs. The bar was maybe half an inch thick, round in cross-section, rough and uneven black iron. It dug painfully into her soles as her entire weight rested on it. She threw her right arm around Aerin’s neck too and shifted herself onto him, hugging him very close, their naked bodies suddenly in full contact.

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his. He sighed as her breasts pressed soft against his chest, and the tip of his cock was squeezed by her pubic mound. She leaned heavily against him, and her warmth, her weight, her feel were so amazing that he forgot all else in the world. He wanted to take her, to come inside her, so, so bad. Still, he didn’t move. She was waiting for something. Their foreheads were touching, but to both of them the thoughts of the other were a complete mystery.

Her rational brain was making one last appeal not to do this, but it was no use. She felt that his whole body was shaking, shaking with lust for her. She would not deny this to herself, and she would not deny this to him.

She climbed to her toes and reached down and grabbed his cock. She stroked it a couple of times – hard like the iron bar, but hot, pulsing, full of life. She guided to her pussy, and air played on his vocal cords as the tip touched the slippery, delicate flesh. When all was in place, she again held onto his neck with both arms and exhaled with a long, shaky, half-laughing breath. Very, very slowly, savouring every moment, she settled down with her ankles, taking him inside her.

She greeted every bulge, every vein under his velvet-smooth skin as it passed her labia and disappeared in her. Her pussy slickly stretched to make room for him, more and more of him, this feeling of fullness growing, swelling, expanding inside her, the boy’s body now within hers. He pulled hard on his chains and moaned into her neck as he felt swallowed into her, his cock penetrating deep into that divine body, experiencing it totally and without limits. She returned his moan when she reached the end and their pubic hair touched, him filling her whole, almost too much too bear. She held that position awkwardly for a long moment, feeling his heartbeat from within. They can catch us, she thought, I don’t care. So worth it.

Now he moved, shifting his hips forward and arching his body towards her, seeking more contact. She glanced at him and again her eyes darted away from his. She leaned down and kissed his jaw, and then continued down his neck. She tried to ride his cock, but it was barely possible in their position, forcing her to stand on her toes and back down. There was another horizontal bar in the grating at about the height of his hips. She hung from his neck and threw her legs over it, sticking them out of into the corridor, the iron digging painfully into her back thighs. Now he could thrust forward directly into her, and he did just that, forceful, feverish moves that made her sigh with pleasure. She let go of him with one hand and played with her clit, hanging precariously, even the ache in her exerted back muscles feeling fantastic.

He watched her body twist, her ribcage rise and fall, her breasts sway to the rhythm; she threw back her head and her hair flew through the air, and he thrust harder, faster, in ecstasy. If only he could touch her, feel her with his hands. Her fingers were digging hard into his shoulder blade where she was anchored. She jerked her head and now her hair fell in disarray over her face.

“Gabrielle…” he moaned.

“Aerin!” she responded. Their names echoed off the walls. His abs were flexing with his thrusts in the soft shadow. She laid her hand, wet with her juices, on his stomach, feeling him, feeling his body work, driven wild by hers. He was helpless to stop her, his body her playground, completely exposed for her to do what she willed; and he leaned forward, giving himself to her, he wanted nothing more than to be her plaything. She moved her hand to his chest, over his heart, and rubbed his nipple with her little finger, feeling it harden under her touch. She let out another giggling gasp and looked him in the eyes.

They were so blue, even in this fire light. He was leaning down on his chains, as if reaching out to her. Something changed – she didn’t get the urge to look away now; no, the opposite, his eyes drew her in, pinned hers down. She laid her hand on his cheek and traced his eyebrow with her thumb. In response he rubbed his cheek against her hand, like a touch-starved animal, looking at her, awed and pleading. He saw something new in her eyes, sincere and unguarded, pupils growing larger in her irises like some shape rising from the depths to the surface of the sea.

She whispered his name again, then rose up and kissed him. Her lips were soft between his, and he put his whole awareness into feeling that mouth that curved in that mocking smile, exploring her with his tongue, her teeth, her inner lip, the tongue of her own. And for this moment, they were just two happy humans sharing themselves, and all the world around them and all that’s in it was nothing; the stone ceiling above was nothing; Behem nothing; and they themselves were nothing, but for their shared joy.

She broke off the kiss, a thin thread of mixed spit still connecting their lips, and looked again into his eyes, and lost herself. Her legs squeezed him and the bars convulsively, and she called out to him as a huge heavy wave of pleasure rolled over her body, leaving only calm bliss behind. He saw her lose control over her face, over all her muscles. He felt her pussy contract around him, sucking him, petting him, teasing him. He felt his own abdomen light up, ecstasy expanding, muscles shaking, pleasure forcing air out of his lungs. With a long broken moan he came, pumping her full of his seed, feeling her with absolute intensity – and then stood still, breathing hard.

Little by little, moment by moment, the outside world made its unwelcome return. He felt iron on his wrists, and she under her thighs; various muscles complained about the heavy loads they had been forced to carry. She looked at her toes, suspended in mid-air. A survival instinct kicked in. They had been pretty loud, definitely audible from the chapel garden. She listened for a moment, but there were no signs of anyone. She started to disentangle herself from the bars and from Aerin. When her feet touched the ground, his cock slid out of her and slapped wet and heavy against his leg. His cum trickled down her thigh. Her hand was still on his shoulder. They looked at each other. They felt that someone should say something, but it now occurred to them that they had not exchanged a single world throughout the whole thing, besides each calling out the other’s name. The present situation, therefore, was somewhat delicate and awkward.

“Okay,” she said, taking her hands off him. “Hold on a second, I’ll just dress up and unchain you.”

“Okay. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

She smiled at him, her usual smile, just a slight derisive pull of the corners of her mouth. But it seemed so different now. For the first time, he felt like he was in on her joke.

She looked for a moment for something to wipe herself with, and settled for the hem of her dress for a lack of other options. He watched with regret as she covered her flushed skin with cloth, carelessly, hands trembling. When she was done she walked out of the cell and locked the door, double-checking it.

As she turned up behind him and raised the key up to unlock the fetters, she hesitated. Her caution returned. She unlocked his fetters very carefully, again ready to lunge back at any moment, as if she was taking a leash off a caged tiger. Yet again nothing happened, though; he stood calm until she undid both locks, and when she whisked the chain away and took a quick step back, he just turned around, rubbing his wrists.

She leaned back against the wall, looking at his naked body, and finally sighed with satisfaction.

“Enjoyed yourself, boy?”

He bit his lip, and swept the whole dungeon with his gaze. “Maybe this place isn’t all that bad.”

“Yeah,” she laughed. Her whole body was still tingling with pleasure, her pussy still basking in the fantastic physicality, tangibility of his cock. Let him out, something urged. The way’s free, Dodo’s out drunk, it’s a moonless night, just let him run!

But three thoughts rose up in opposition. Number one, if Aerin escaped tonight, they’d surely kill Dodo for this – anything to save their face and placate Titulus. Dodo might be pretty simple, and considerably less pretty than Aerin, but this was not a life for life that she was willing to just let happen. Number two, Aerin had no chance on foot. As soon as they realize he’s gone, they’ll go for him with the dogs and the horses. He’d need at least a horse of his own to have any chance, and there was no way to get one from the stables and lead it through the gate unnoticed. Number three, there were very few people in the castle now, and almost all of them were gathered in groups. It really wouldn’t be hard to guess that it was her that let him out. And that would be consorting with an enemy at wartime, and that would be treason. The punishment would be severe. So, Gabrielle, he may have a pretty face and he may be a good lay, and you may feel bad for him, but how much would you really be willing to sacrifice for his life?

Her smile slackened and she looked up the stairway. “I have to go,” she said. She took the torch and walked to the passage.

“Hey, wait a moment!”

She stopped on the first step. He ran along her, right to the corner of his cell.

“Will I see you again?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment before she spoke.

“Aerin, if I see the slightest chance, you will see me, you will feel me, and you will taste me.”

And with that goodbye, she ran up the stairs.

Dodo was still snoring in the same position when she lightly passed him. There was nobody outside when she left the tower. The few lights in the windows that had been lit when she went in continued on, as if nothing had happened. The night was mild and fresh, the sky full of stars. She took a few unsteady steps on the grass, head upwards. The stars glimmered, here as in the capital, here as in Kontaria. There was wind in the east, and it swelled for a moment, bringing to Behem air from far away places. And there and then Gabrielle realized what she wanted to do.

She will not let them harm Aerin. He does not deserve to die. Not because of this stupid bullshit war. Tonight is not yet the night, but somehow, anyhow, she will find a way to get him out of here.

Yeah! You hear that, Paula? You hear that, Clement? Pelagius? Vulmar, Adhemar and Valdemar? Titulus? I declare my war on you and this entire piece of shit castle. He will not die. I’ve already outwitted you, gave him food, gave him comfort when you were trying to break him. Now I fucked him, here, under your roof, this fortress of chastity, of prudish furious harshness that you fuckwits keep calling moral values! I’ll come up with a plan and make him slip right out of your grubby hammy hands. You think there’s stopping me? I’m Gabrielle of Lhamedos, granddaughter of Theodoric the Red, who the fuck do you think you are?!

Actually, I’m a great-great-granddaughter, and there’s this family rumour that grandma was born out of an illicit affair, so…

Shut the fuck up, brain. This is no time for details.

She walked on, with a dancing step, aimlessly, her mind exhilarated, her body still in afterglow, magnetized, charged with the boy. Not really caring how, she found herself on the walls, and then up the turret with the view over the town.

It was very well visible, a lake of lights on the dark plain. She looked on, and at length bursts of other, colourful light started appearing above it. They were lighting the fireworks.

She turned around and then lied down with her back on the battlements, her neck arched and head upside down, her hair and arms dropping down along the wall. What a beautiful night, she thought, as more and more fireworks exploded wrong way up under the upturned town. She grinned to herself, to the lights, and to the stars. She hoped that everyone else was having a great Midsummer, too.

* * *

She took the torch and left him in the dark, but it was all for the better – if he could barely see a thing, it was easier for him to re-watch in his mind all that he had seen, every detail of her.

He threw himself on his bedding, grabbed his head in his hands, and just grinned at the ceiling. His cock, still wet from her pussy, felt cool out in the air. He felt the spots on his shoulder blade where her nails had dug in. Across his abs and his chest his skin still tingled with pleasure where her warm soft hand had been exploring.

Gabrielle. He didn’t have to pretend before himself anymore that he hadn’t fallen for her, beyond all reason. And she said she’d try to return! He wasn’t sure if the anticipation would make his stay in the dungeon more or less bearable.

Oh yes, the dungeon. It was all sorts of absurd now, this pit where he experienced the lowest lows and the highest highs. Was he going to die here or not? Turns out Gabrielle was never sent here by his captors. Was she then telling the truth when she said they’d let him go? Would she even know?

He didn’t know. The girl was still full of mysteries, no less now that he’d been inside of her.


	20. Afterglow

Behem is only quiet when its people are awake, Gabrielle noted. At night, when they go to bed, you can barely hear yourself think for all the cicadas; early in the morning, before they get up, it’s the hundreds of small birds chirping away in the pale pink light.

Though she only had a couple hours of sleep, Gabrielle felt more refreshed than she had in months. The muscles of her legs and back were aching, the ones she had forced to support her whole body as Aerin was thrusting inside her. This pain, associated with that pleasure, made her smile wide.

When the first rays of the sun fell through her chamber window she woke right up, with an idea ready in her head. Wasting not a minute she dressed herself up – in a fresh dress, though the idea of wearing the triumphantly cum-stained one in front of Paula was enticing, if gross – and ran down. Her target was the ox carts by the larder.

There technically was a guard – an old soldier who went over to the gatehouse to hang out with the guards there.

There were six carts – heavy, lumbering affairs on solid wheels, covered with thick cloth. Gabrielle made sure there was nobody around, lifted the flap at the back of one, and looked inside. It was stocked with large jute sacks which upon some poking revealed themselves to contain either grain, beans, or root vegetables. She climbed into the cart. The sacks were mostly heaped on top of each other, in a way to provide a good balance to the cart, but not too neatly. Perfect.

She re-emerged to the courtyard and went to the dungeon tower. The entry door was now closed shut. She peeked through the window of the guard room. Dodo must have woken up at some point, because he moved himself to his proper post, a bedding that was positioned across the door that lead down to the stairway, in such a way that his body blocked the passage.

She rounded the corner of the tower and entered the chapel garden. She found the dungeon windows at the ground level. She crouched to the closer one. The bars were installed near the inner side of the thick wall, so that she had to crouch into the vaulted niche, large enough to sit in, in order to reach them and take a look inside.

He was asleep, lying on his back with every limb thrown in a different direction and one forearm drawn over his eyes. She lied down on her stomach, rested her chin on her hands and watched him for a while, one leg swinging up and down from the knee. What a lazy boy, sleeping through a fine morning like this. She considered calling out to him, but the window was so well isolated from the outer courtyard by the yews and junipers growing by the tower’s walls that there was no hurry – she was sure she could easily talk to him unnoticed even in the afternoon.

Besides, let him stew a bit going restless with anticipation for her. You don’t call in on a guy right the next morning, especially not when you’re a princess.

Around noon Paula returned, having left the town as soon as it was possible. Gabrielle was for once happy to luncheon with her. Having secretly triumphed over her horrid ladyship in the most outrageous way possible, she felt invincible, impervious to her. She watched her silently and with a tiny lopsided smile as she talked with Clement and Pelagius.

“Were the celebrations a success, my lady?” the priest asked.

“Oh, you know those townspeople. It was just an excuse to get drunk and dance. In my days, people knew that it was foremost a day to worship the gods.”

“Very true, very true.”

“The true meaning of Midsummer is lost. True zeal replaced with fireworks. Fireworks! These damned things gave me a migraine again. I insisted that they stop the show halfway through. I think everyone was too drunk to notice anyway!”

Pelagius was unsure whether to laugh or sympathize, so he emitted a general-purpose stifled sigh that could be interpreted as both. Gabrielle had no dilemma here – she just barely contained her laughter. This was Paula in a nutshell, attempting to stomp out the bit of fun that people have been looking forward to for months because the very idea of fun gave her a headache.

A soldier meekly entered the room and whispered something to Clement. The majordomo excused himself and scuttled away from the table, his key ring jingling with each step. Paula turned to Gabrielle.

“So, young lady,” she said with a honeyed voice, “did you enjoy your Midsummer?”

Gabrielle looked right into those tiny glittering eyes, and assumed an expression of utmost innocence. “Yes, my lady. Father Pelagius celebrated a very wonderful ceremony here at the chapel. Even afterwards I couldn’t sleep, seized by fervour as I was. I felt touched by the gods, as if they were inside me, and I called out their names into the night.”

Paula’s eyes narrowed, which was an achievement considering how small they were in the first place. She was not sure what game this was, but she was sure she didn’t like it. “Oh really,” she said with rising pitch, “and what gods were that?”

Gabrielle swirled her mug of water. “Oh, there are various gods of my idolatry. Gautier, of the unjustly suffering. Iolaus, the young warrior. Genesmo, of passion.” She put down her mug with a small thud and very slightly leaned towards Paula. “Hermotimus, of getting even.” She smiled vacantly.

Paula threw away the napkin she was using and was about to reply when Clement hastily re-entered the room.

“My lady, a messenger at the gatehouse announced that more wounded are coming from Kontaria. The news aren’t too good, I’m afraid.”

Gabrielle, having no option to jump up, had to settle for blinking with joy. Yeah, horse boys! Show that neckless piece of shit what’s what! Paula, on the other hand, slammed her open hand on the table.

“What’s happened now?” she demanded.

What happened in Kontaria was as follows: Titulus decided to take again the same risk that had brought him defeat before, and separate his cavalry from his infantry to bait the Kontarians into attacking. This they did, except this time Titulus executed all his manoeuvres perfectly, and rammed right into their flank as they were charging, tearing into them, standards a-waving and armour a-clanging. But the whole of the Kontarian warband was like a great dragonfly, moving as one, instantly taking flight when a danger appears; they fell back before Titulus, and after the first skirmish his spirited charge was only hitting air, the enemy disappearing in the woods. Many Harmeni soldiers, made eager with finally seeing the Kontarians and already tasting victory, followed them. This was a fatal mistake. The Kontarians’ rapid retreat was in no way disorderly; and now small groups were circling back and harassing, isolating, and destroying their pursuers. In the end of the day, having taken great risks and performed astonishing feats of battlefield organization, Titulus suffered more losses than he had inflicted. As night fell, his army regrouped diminished, and the Kontarians remained beyond his reach still, ever present but untouchable, a laughter in the dark.

This was the story that the messenger told to Clement, and Clement to Paula. The Lady of Behem listened to it with growing fury, and at the end of it launched a diatribe against forest barbarians, undeserving weak-willed soldiers, and the upcoming wrath of the gods. Pelagius and Clement immediately ventured to calm her down. After some ten minutes, her anger abated to regular levels.

“I’m going to have to take my headache medicine… imagine what a shame it would be to us if we lost this war!”

On the spur of the moment, Gabrielle decided that this, the moment of calm after the storm, was the perfect time to test the waters concerning Aerin, and maybe plant an idea in Paula’s head.

“It wouldn’t be that bad for Behem, would it, my lady? You’d just re-open the trade routes, set your prisoner free, and go on exactly as before?”

“It’s a matter of respect, girl! They will think us weak! Don’t you see that?!”

And with that final shrill eruption, she rose from the table and retired to her chambers. Alright then, Gabrielle thought, there’s definitely no hope that the lady-bitch of the castle will spare him his life, that monstrosity. The suggestion was at least worth a try though. Not much of a risk, too – all the people in the room were too agitated to take note that she very specifically mentioned Aerin.

Later, looking back on that day, Gabrielle had to admit that this assumption was the first of her very serious mistakes. After all the time she had spent in Behem, she should have been aware that Clement took note of absolutely everything.


	21. Hear the Soldier Groan

The wounded who arrived later that afternoon seemed in pretty rough shape, some hauled in here on carts, too injured to ride. The men of the castle either helped them down or outright carried them to the chapel, where the monks and the castle’s physician set up a temporary infirmary. There were maybe a dozen of them – injured gravely enough to be sent away from the army, but not too gravely to travel the distance. Gabrielle watched them, bloodied bandages and grimaces of pain and all, and her joy at the Kontarian victory diminished somewhat. It would have made more sense if it was the sanctimonious assholes like Paula or the three young monks that tasted the war first-hand, not hapless low-born. But nothing to be done here.

As the last of the injured disappeared in the chapel, there was suddenly a hollow sound from the drawbridge. The people turned and stared.

Another cart was approaching the gatehouse. It was pulled by a single thin black horse. It was driven by a single thin old man. Its cargo was covered entirely with a shroud. A hush fell over the courtyard.

It passed the gate and stopped, with a squeak, on the grass.

Clement approached the cart’s driver. He cleared his throat and gestured towards the shroud.

“Is that… the dead?” he asked.

The driver looked at Clement, with one eye; the other was overgrown with a cataract, white as dry bone, seeing nothing of this world. Presently, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Huh?” he said.

“Your cargo. Are they dead?”

“Sir, what are you talking about? It’s the leftover fireworks from yesterday. Lady Paula never said what to do with them so the town council is sending them back hereways.” He looked at the crowd around him. “Bad time?”

As Clement was ordering for the fireworks to be very carefully carried to a remote and relatively fireproof turret, Gabrielle sought out and exchanged a few words with the old soldier that was supposed to be guarding the oxcarts bound for the border forts. A few minutes later, making sure she wasn’t being watched by anyone, she walked into the chapel garden.


	22. We'll Go At It Alone

Aerin spent the entire day walking in circles around his cell.

When he woke up, he enjoyed maybe two seconds of peace – half-conscious confusion of the freshly awakened – before his brain sparked and jumped to its foremost subject. Gabrielle, Gabrielle’s eyes in the torchlight, Gabrielle’s naked body pressed against his, Gabrielle’s wet pussy tight around his cock. Then from the haze a flat cold thought emerged, that it was just a dream, that none of it had really happened. But as his mind floated out from sleep, the realization rushed in, a wave of thrill; no, it definitely happened. I swear man, it’s in the real memory, not the dream memory. I fucked a princess, or got fucked by a princess, probably both, whatever, point stands!

When Dodo came down to check on him, Aerin greeted him with a broad smile and bid him an excellent morning indeed. The guard seemed a little out of sorts and only grunted in response. Aerin was amazed that he had never before noticed what a pleasant, good-natured man that Dodo was. He wished he’d met him under more fortunate circumstances.

For hours and hours he was driven insane by his confinement, replaying all that happened last night move by move, wondering when she’ll be back, speculating what all of this meant for his potential freedom. For the first time in a while, he allowed himself some hope. Maybe he’d see home again. Home! How were they doing? Were they winning the war? Were they safe? His family? Leapfrog? Foy? Everyone?

By afternoon, his feet were aching from all the impatient pacing. He had to at least see her face again. He felt like he was about to snap. To take his mind off her, he sat down by the wall and tried to recount all the scouting routes in Kontaria, visualising them as they snaked around the forest.

He was just past the beech forest by the Red Hill when someone whispered his name. He looked up.

And here she was, dressed all in white, crouched to the bars of the window to his cell.

He felt that he failed to make his smile as cool and casual as he was aiming to.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he said, walking over to the window.

“Impatient?”

“Er… just curious.”

He stopped right below her, looking up. She cocked her head. She was looking at him the way she had yesterday. His face felt hot.

“You mean to tell me that you weren’t fantasizing about me the entire day?”

He vigorously rubbed the back of his head. “What? No, only a bit. I’m a busy man, you know.”

She smiled wider. “Well, won’t interrupt your business then. Bye!”

With that, she crawled out of the window’s niche and stepped out, disappearing from his view. A sudden fear took over him.

“No no no, wait!” He jumped and grabbed the bars, pulling himself up to the window. “Gabrielle!”

She leaned down from just beyond the niche’s frame, and his scared face was now level with her triumphant, derisive, shit-eating grin. He smiled and looked away, exhaling. The girl was clearly evil. Delightfully evil.

“You were saying, boy?”

“I mean, it would be cool if you stayed.”

“Then ask me nicely.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” He enveloped the bars with his forearms and found a footing among the stones. “Please stay, Gabrielle. Pretty please?”

“Your royal highness.”

“What?”

“You shall address your superiors with the appropriate titles, boy.”

“Oh go suck a dick.”

She burst out laughing. “Alright, you tried. I’ll train you in proper conversation yet.”

“Okay, okay. So far, your lessons on proper intercourse have been very enjoyable.”

She bit her lip. “Yeah, haven’t they.”

He was maybe two feet away from her, face pressed to the bars. She wanted to reach out, touch him, kiss him. But for all the decidedly positive thoughts she had about him, there was a doubt in her mind that made her keep her distance. The greater part of her found it ridiculous that she thought this way, and yet she couldn’t quite overrule it.

She didn’t actually know him. She’d heard like a hundred words from him since they’d met. What if he tries to grab her? What, why would he now? So that he can choke her to death and avenge the invasion with a death in the royal family, or something. Who knows. What if Paula is right and Kontarians are all awful violent thugs, no matter how pleasant their voices and how hard and satisfying their cocks?

Small chance. But a chance nonetheless. Let’s not get too close when his hands are unbound.

And so she stayed at the outer edge of the window niche, more than an arm’s length away from the bars, and produced a book.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“As far as anyone who might be watching is concerned, I’m reading a book in the garden, like I sometimes do.” She was now turned with her profile to him. “Hey, news from Kontaria came today. You guys are still kicking Titulus’s ass.”

“What?!” He said that louder than he should have, and Gabrielle nervously looked around her. “Alright! I knew the guys wouldn’t fold to the bastard! What did you hear, exactly?”

She relied the whole story. He swung happily on his toes. “They’ll do it. They’ll fucking do it. Brecca, you glorious bastard!”

“Who’s Brecca?”

“A chieftain. I’ll tell you later. Hey, how long do you think we have to hold off before Titulus gets fed up and goes home?”

“Oh, I think he’s practically finished.”

“What! Why?”

She smiled and closed the book, looking to the sky. Seems like they were going to talk about politics on their first date. “Okay, I’ll tell you about Kontaria’s best asset in this whole war. It’s not your cavalry, it’s not your forests. You have something even better.

“So the thing is, Harmen is large. It takes like five days to relay a message from the capital to Behem – more in bad weather. Further still is the border with Redona. It’s all the way to the south, basically on the opposite side of the Kingdom from Kontaria.

“Redona is a powerful state, and the war we’re fighting there is much larger than what’s going on here. So the King and his court also went there, to the south, to watch over the situation closely. But this means he can’t possibly oversee this war here, so far away from him. This is why he left one of his most trusted ministers in the north, to whom he has given his full royal authority to conduct the war in the King’s name. That man now sits in a city about two days’ ride south from here, getting signals from both Redona and Kontaria, and has instructions to withdraw Titulus and send him down south if only he judges it necessary. This minister is called Oren, he’s the Duke of Haratraz and the King’s old friend.”

Now she looked straight at Aerin. “And listen, this is the good part. Oren is also an old enemy of Titulus. Different factions at court, bad blood going back decades. Titulus’s famous victories have been pissing him off for years. He absolutely does not want to see him gain yet more glory in Kontaria. Now of course he’s still loyal to the King, and the King himself is not stupid, he knows all of this, so Oren won’t actively sabotage Titulus or anything. But he must be just itching for a justification to rush in, recall the army, settle a peace, and send Titulus humbled down to Redona where he’s more needed. And our poor general friend has now fucked up twice. This invasion is dangling on a thread.”

Aerin listened to all of this motionless, ignoring the growing stiffness in the foot that was bearing all his weight, wedged in a gap between two stone bricks. He’d always thought of this war, and all other wars, as settled out in the open between armed men in combat. These political considerations had so far escaped him.

“So if the King knows all this, then why did he pick that guy, Oren, to manage this war, out of all people?”

“There’s like a thousand possible reasons. Political, strategic, personal. He could want to prevent Oren from sparring with other great nobles at war councils, while also keeping him away from the capital while he himself isn’t there. He could want this war ended as soon as possible, successful or not, without himself appearing weak by calling it off. Or he could just be pissed off at Titulus, at Oren, or both. I’m far from good gossip now, it’s really hard to tell.”

“Did something similar happen sixteen years ago, when we fended off the previous invasion? Did we succeed because one of your guys disliked another one of your guys?”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe. As a country gets mightier and its ability to defeat its enemies grows, so too grows its ability to defeat itself.”

Fair enough, he thought. He changed his feet in the gap. Then he gathered his courage and asked the question which had been festering at the bottom of his mind for days.

“So, supposing we win the war, will they let me go?”

She twiddled her sleeve nervously. “Gods, no, they will not let you go, never. This is why I’ll have to help you escape.” He raised his eyebrows and said nothing. “Yeah, listen. Every ten days, a caravan with supplies leaves for the border forts towards Kontaria. The next one leaves tomorrow, but that’s too soon for us. You’re taking the one after. We’ll hide you in a jute sack and hide the sack in the cargo. There are guards, but they are all old soldiers who don’t pay much attention and are usually tipsy anyway – the road to the forts is very safe. I talked with one of them. They always take the same route and take two full days and nights to reach their destination on the third morning. On the second night they set camp about ten miles away from the border. This is where you can sneak out. You can take some food from the carts themselves, and walk east. The forts are there to stop armies, a single person will slip by unnoticed. Once past them, you just keep going, and in two or three days you’re in Kontaria.”

He looked at her with newfound awe. “Shit. Yes, this is brilliant. I know that way, we followed it on the way here! But how will I get past Dodo?”

She cleared her throat. “That bit of the plan is still under construction. I need to come up with something that causes him no problems and doesn’t implicate me in any way. But don’t worry, we have ten days. I’ll figure it out.”

She suddenly turned away. A soldier was walking on the other side of the gnarly old junipers, just feet away from her. He passed, not noticing anything, and continued on his way towards the inner courtyard. Still, the start he gave her was noticeable. When she turned back Aerin saw her wide open eyes, parted mouth, and how heavily she breathed. This begged another question.

“Hey, Gabrielle… are you putting yourself in danger doing all of this?”

“No, not really,” she said. There was a higher pitch to her voice that he did not like. He ran his fingers along the bars.

“What would they do to you if you got caught?”

“Well, they’d be pissed off. But they wouldn’t murder me or anything. Nah, they enjoy slower sorts of punishment.”

He watched her closely. Her whole body grew rigid now. There was something welled up inside her.

“You don’t seem to like them, whoever they are.”

“No.”

“Are you here in Behem out of your own free will? Are you actually here to study?”

For a long while, she was silent. Damnit, she thought. Did it really show that much? No, said a giddy voice inside her, that’s just Aerin. The boy is so clever and sensitive! Shut up. Should she tell him? Why not, actually? It’s not like he was in any position to use this against her.

“No, I was sent here as a punishment. The ruler of this castle, Lady Paula, is kind of famous for being an uptight asshole, and my family thought she’d sort me out.”

“Punishment for what? Why do you need sorting out?”

“I mean, one of my aunts caught me in kind of a compromising situation back at the capital.”

“What compromising situation?”

Her eyes glittered. “For your information, she caught me with my mouth around the cock of a very handsome young man.”

Aerin lost his footing and slid down the wall to the floor, laughing. Gabrielle hid her face in her palms, giving up and laughing as well. “This is not funny, you stupid dickhole! I almost gave that aunt a heart attack! Though hopefully she’s at least learned to knock!”

Aerin wheezed, took a step back and looked up to the window. “Based on yesterday, I thought you knew what locks are for!”

“I mean, yeah.” She flicked at her dress. “I have to wear white all the time here. It’s the colour of chastity, see. Your cum looked very nice on it last night, I thought.”

Aerin felt a pang of pride, and also of something else. “I’m always happy to give you more. Do you think you can… come over tonight?”

“Nah. It’s difficult to get past Dodo…”

“Oh. Right.”

“But I meant what I said. If only there’s opportunity, I’ll be all over you.” She looked back towards the garden. It was getting late. “Okay, I need to go now.” She crawled into the window niche and rested her hands on the bars. “But, um. Before I go, take your clothes off for me. I want to see you in a good light.”

Aerin felt his face get hot again. He looked around. Eh. Sure.

The rags he was wearing were easy to slip out of. In a moment, he stood before her naked, delighted with the look of intent lust on her face.

“Amazing,” she said. And it really was. That chest, those abs, that cock and those balls, those legs and arms, that shy and yet posturing smile – mouth-watering, all the parts and the sum of them.

“Show me your tits,” he ventured. “It’s only fair, isn’t it?”

She didn’t even consider it, her hands went for the laces of her dress at once, and a short bout of fidgeting later she threw its fabric off her shoulders and her breasts were free in the air. She grabbed at them and jiggled them, looking at his cock, which responded happily, swelling, getting heavier. She leaned closer to give him a better look, pinched her nipples, licked her lips…

She thought she heard a sound behind her. She immediately readjusted her dress, pulled at the laces and crawled back out of the window. There was nobody behind her, just some birds scurrying through the bushes. Still, her heart hammered.

“What is it?” Aerin whispered.

“Nothing. I thought I heard somebody.”

She gave him one last longing look. “I really got to go now. I’ll be back tomorrow, same time. Think of me when you touch yourself. I know I’ll think of you.”

He smiled broadly. “Gods, you’re so romantic.”

She disappeared from his view. As she was leaving the garden, she thought on how unfair it was that he got to play with that cock when it was her that wanted it so badly.

He was meanwhile left standing in the middle of the cell, with a dumb smile on his face, said cock hard and risen in the air but with nowhere to go. He sighed, sat down, took it in his hand, and did just as she asked, thinking of her, her naked breasts fresh on his mind. He went at it slowly, with unhurried strokes, and in a few minutes reached a calm, gratifying orgasm, a tranquil release that left his muscles relaxed and him breathing deep.

He lay on his bedding, watching the eternally constant ceiling, and he was pretty sure nobody ever felt more blissful in a dungeon. He was going to get out. He just had to wait ten days and he could go home. And he would have a home to get back to! They were doing it, they were keeping Titulus away from the villages, they were so close to victory!

And somehow his happiness faltered and dwindled. He shifted around, now uncomfortable. What’s that about?

From the back of his mind, thick thoughts oozed out.

They are fighting bravely in Kontaria, putting themselves in danger’s way, together, doing good. In here, a beautiful and up to now carefree girl decides to put herself in danger just for you, planning and organizing your escape. And what about you? You got here because of a stupid and selfish act. You never should have gone into that camp, you were supposed to watch and report. You got yourself caught like an idiot. And look what you got out of it. All around you people are risking their lives, and you’re just sitting here doing nothing all day, eating well, washing yourself with warm water, getting laid. And speaking of that, you didn’t even have to satisfy the girl; she just tied you up and did all the work herself, you just needed to stand there with your dick up. “What were you doing during that famous Titulus invasion,” a child will ask you one day many years from now. “I was hidden in a dungeon, mostly jacking off. The food was good.” What kind of a person are you? What man?

The dungeon was very quiet. Outside, night was falling. Aerin lay unmoving.

Ah, fuck all that. Did he ask for any of this? Did he not suffer for his mistake? That’s just a shitty way of thinking and it won’t help with anything. Useless anxiety. He pressed his knuckles to the wall and ground them in, beyond the threshold of pain, until he felt nothing in them but faint tickling.

Useless.

He withdrew his hand and in its dark red joints his nerves came back to life, sending out a surge of superficial ache. He let it pass through him, gradually subduing, eventually diminishing to just a tingle as his skin returned to its normal colour. He took a deep breath. He wondered if Gabrielle was thinking of him. She was, in fact – she was at the moment muttering his name, eyes closed and hips pushed forward and two fingers stuffed deep inside her – but that he wouldn’t know.


	23. By the Window

The next day took fifty years to reach the afternoon. The monks were all busy with the wounded, so Gabrielle did not go to the chapel – much worse, she had to do hear reading in the corner of Paula’s hall, and listen for hours as the lady vented and as Clement assented on all sorts of incomprehensibly stupid subjects. Aerin, all the while, was locked in with his thoughts, walking back and forth like an animal in a cage, amazed at how long a single day could be.

When she finally came he didn’t even had the strength to hide his joy; he jumped up to the window and took his tried position from yesterday. His enthusiastic grin completely defeated her: eyebrows raised in disarray, eyes lighting up, dimples in the corners of his mouth, mouth opened wide with its large teeth dominating his whole face. That mouth was just made for her to kiss. And if she tried, with him unchained, would he kiss her back? Or would he seize her and bite through her throat?

These thoughts still lingered, still a part of her believed them, even as she looked at his open face. He seemed nice. Well, Alex had seemed nice too, and look how that turned out. But Aerin surely wouldn’t harm her as long as she was his only way out of Behem. Surely? This boy had risked his life for glory before. What was going on in his mind, really? What did he really think of her, as he looked up at her from his pit? Her, a princess of the country that invaded his home?

He definitely had good reasons to act nice to her, should he secretly detest her. But if he was faking liking her, he was faking it really well. Although the apprehension was always there, the greater part of her mind was warming up to him more and more. Near him, all the day’s insufferability gradually lifted off her, and she got chatty; and the topic she turned to was Paula. Aerin was eager to learn of the castle’s dreaded lady, his ultimate dungeon master. Gabrielle unleashed on him all her baggage of observations and stories which she had been accumulating, aided with acting out the lady’s shrill voice and body language.

“…and then she accused the magistrate of trying on purpose to demoralize the people and kicked him out! You get it? Just because he proposed that maybe the punishment for selling silphium should be reduced from flogging and a high fine to just a high fine!”

“Man, I knew that Harmen was a crazy place, but not this crazy. No offence.”

“Yeah. Now she’s investigating him and everything, she’s convinced he’s a foreign agent conspiring to weaken the moral fibre of the common folk. And the guy just knows how things are and wants to make the lives of some people less ridiculous! Gods. No wonder her husband died so young.”

“She never had any children?”

“Nah. When she finally croaks, Behem will revert to the King. Then he’ll grant it to someone. Probably someone better, because it could hardly be worse.”

“But she can’t be that bad to you, can she? You’re a princess and all.”

"No kidding, she does treat me like an actual prisoner! The day I arrived, she took away all my things that I had with me!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. She took away my clothes, because I was only to wear this white bullshit while here. All my personal stuff, too. And, shit, wait till you hear about my horse. See, I rode in on my favourite colt, from my father's stables, one I had ever since it was a tiny little foal. So a few days after I've arrived things are looking pretty grim and I walk over to the stable to at least groom it - it's pretty clear at that point she wouldn't be letting me out for rides. And I find it gone! That asshole sold it to a local merchant at half price. And here's the best part, she didn't warn me, she didn't inform me, she just waited for me to be down, to walk to that stable for some cheering up, and then, then to discover it, to have to ask the smug fucking stable guy what happened, to run back to her and scream at her just so she can listen to it with bliss on her pig fucking face!"

She kicked at the wall of the niche with the sole of her shoe, then reflected and glanced to the garden. All their conversations were spoken barely louder than a whisper, and she almost raised her voice there.

“Alright. Rough. Do your parents know?”

“Oh, they know and they approve. Look, they’re good politicians. They want me to be respectable and marry up, they don’t give a shit if I’m happy. You know, I said it wrong, she didn’t take away all of my personal stuff. She left me with a bunch of old family jewellery, that necklace with the royal eagle and stuff like that. As if that, my identity as a part of the family, was the only thing she didn’t mean to destroy in me.”

“You really don’t think anyone in your family cares about you? How does that even work, as a family?”

Between her fingers, she was absent-mindedly grinding blades of grass to a fine paste. “You haven’t seen many noble families, have you? They are more of tactical units, tools for making alliances. I have two younger sisters that I barely even know. We’ve been sent out to different houses to be fostered. I was the oldest, so I got to live in the capital. I’ve seen the older one for like three days earlier this year. She’s fourteen now. Just this complete stranger that sort of looks like me. We’ve talked about new developments in planning palace parks and about the genealogy of the royal house of Redona. It was very nice and formal, and the lady that accompanied us said it brought tears to her eyes to see such authentic sisterly devotion. Ugh!”

“Rougher still.” There was a silence. “What happened to the guy they caught you with? Locked away somewhere too?”

“Ha. His name was Alex. Alex, son of Cyril, Count of Crows… that’s how they call them. See, family crest is a bunch of crows on azure background…” She zoned out for a moment. “No, the little bitch told them that it was I that talked him into it all and he didn’t know how to refuse. As far as I can tell, he got patted on the back and, although nobody commended him, there were just shrugs and talk of how boys will be boys.” She shook her head. “Which was a perfectly okay reaction, and I just don’t understand why I couldn’t have gotten the same. Shit, can we stop talking about me?”

So Aerin told her of his home village, how he helped out in the fields when he was younger, and now with the horses; and of the people there, his lost friends and family. She stayed for hours, pretending to read her book, imagining Kontaria, until the sky began to darken.

“It sounds like a great place,” she said when he fell silent for a while.

“It is a great place. You should have been born there, you’d fit right in.”

“Nah, you should have been born as a lordling in Harmen. We’d have so much fun together in the capital. Oh, wait. Oh shit.” She hid her face in her palms and laughed noiselessly. “I’m imagining you in courtly clothes right now. This is hysterical.”

“Oh? I don’t see why!”

She was shaking. “You’d wear those striped satin breeches… haaa… oh gods and a puffy hat with a feather! Oh fuck, I’m fucking dying!”

Aerin dropped to the floor and crossed his arms. “I’d pull off that look if I wanted to!” She really struggled to keep quiet at that. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I’d be a right ponce if I was born in the land of ponces. Thinking about religion and invasions all day long. And maybe parks.”

“Nah, you’d be one of the fun ones.” She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “You’d course the capital impressing the ladies with your horsemanship and you’d be a proper dirty little slut.”

He beamed at her. “Like you?”

She fought down her laughter and looked at him sternly. “Now, let’s observe the rules. You don’t have any royal blood. You get to be called a dirty little slut. I’m a princess. I get to be called a sophisticated libertine. You will now apologize for your insolence.”

He returned to the window. “Okay, I’m sorry. You’re not little.”

She giggled and shook her head. Aerin had one thing in common with Paula – they were both completely unintimidated by her pedigree. This was actually one of the things which made him so interesting. But this was also one more reason to be careful around him, the watchful part of her urged.

“Okay, I’m leaving you then,” she said, getting up. It was suppertime. “Same time tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Fuck, waiting here for you kills me.”

“It does look pretty boring down there.” She pondered this for a second. “I can leave you my book to read. You can read, right?”

“Oh, wow. Now I’m offended.”

She smiled brightly. “Oh, excuse me, Professor Horse Boy. Here,” she said, tossing him the small cloth-bound tome. “See you tomorrow.”

He caught it and slunk back down to the floor. He stretched. His feet were really aching after hours on tip-toes, but what can you do.

He leafed through the book. The cheek of that girl, thinking him some moron that cannot read! Of course he could read.

It’s just he could read runes, not letters. Kontaria and Harmen might have shared a language, but their approach to writing it down was wildly different. That, however, was a detail he didn’t feel like sharing with her royal majesty.

He squinted at the symbols. Many of them were similar to the runes, actually. With a bit of thinking, he could even make out some words. Ah, that’s good. Breaking this code would keep him well occupied the next day.


	24. Crude

Gabrielle was in a great mood that evening. Finally venting about Paula and Alex took a load off her mind. She even was less mad about her lost colt now.

Besides, she was really fond of that new colt that she found in the dungeon. He could do really fun tricks.

She was upbeat at supper, even though she had to listen to Paula rant, and more than once caught Clement’s glimmering eyes curiously lingering on her. After the meal she sneaked out to the outer courtyard. Behind the larder there was a sort of an open storage area, where some currently unused empty barrels and crates stood. She quietly fished around until she found what she’d been looking for – a large jute sack. She held it out in her outstretched arms. It was definitely large enough for her to fit inside. It would also do for Aerin, even correcting for the fact that he was pretty tall. Tall, lean, and with wonderful bright eyes. Damnit, will you shut up for a second. Stupid-ass thirsty brain.

She walked back to the inner courtyard with the sack bundled under her arm, nodding to the guards confidently enough that they didn’t register this as in any way strange. Carefully avoiding any servants in the hallways, she made it to her chamber, and hid the sack under her bed.

Well, this went smoothly enough. Now just to think of a way to get Aerin past Dodo.

She now had several hours to think. She lit a candle and sat at her table. Alright, brain, now show off your creativity.

Um.

That’s the thing about coming up with stuff. You imagine that there are plenty of solutions to your problems, and if you could just find a few undisturbed hours to sit down and think about them really hard, you’d certainly find them out. But “thinking hard” isn’t really much of a thing when you have no foothold, is it. You end up sitting in one place, absolutely none the wiser than you were during your busy day, trying to conjure an idea out of thin air like a fraudulent magician.

Okay, what options did she have? She couldn’t try to order Dodo around again – she was not sure he’d listen and, besides, it would obviously implicate her in the escape. She could give Aerin some tool to pick or crack open his cell lock, but there was still no way out of the dungeon other than Dodo’s door. And there was definitely no way Aerin could overpower, knock out, or even slow down Dodo. The guard was six foot eight and weighed a fucking ton. He’d kick him apart!

Was there any way to surprise hit him in the head really hard? Okay, but people don’t actually get knocked out cold from getting hit in the head, unless maybe if you get really incredibly lucky. Way more likely they either get a headache or they die.

No, Dodo would have to be drawn out with some sort of a diversion. But Clement ordered him to never leave the dungeon tower, and Dodo was extremely literal – he would stay there, even if there was a fire. What if she somehow lured him into some other cell and locked him in there – but again, she can’t get implicated in this. Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

She stayed up until the morning light and then went to bed with no good ideas. She only hoped that finding ways which do not work counted as progress.

* * *

 

She had hoped that she’d be mostly left alone the next day, but over breakfast Pelagius, helping himself with a second serving of cold meats with red currant sauce, dispelled these hopes.

“Our wounded are getting better, my lady. The boys will have time to educate you today. Also, we thought that you might help a bit in the infirmary yourself. It would surely raise the soldiers’ morale, someone of royal blood coming to tend to them.”

“That is a great idea, Father,” screeched Paula. “Let the girl do something useful once in a while.”

Lady Paula was in a sour mood that morning. News came from Redona – not terrible, but not particularly good either. Another battle was inconclusive, and the war was looking to settle in a precarious standstill. For someone like Paula, deriving her sense of self-worth from the majesty and the might of the realm, this was an unacceptable situation.

The wounded were laid out on simple beds arranged in rows in the chapel’s nave, the stone gods overlooking them. Some of the more badly wounded were lying on their backs, wrapped in bandages; most of them were sitting up, talking, evidently stronger already. These bowed their heads when they saw the princess enter after Pelagius.

The reverend father announced that the princess will assist the monks in tending to the wounded, and noted how that confirms the unity of the crown and the army and also some other weapon-grade bullshit she wasn’t prepared to pay attention to. He then handed her over to Adhemar, who happened to be the nearest, and wandered off somewhere. Adhemar pointed to her a small cauldron hanging over a hearth that normally harboured the sacrificial flame.

“Boil three parts water, one part honey in there. Add three handfuls of dried yarrow. Then bring me a bowl full of the stuff.”

She made the fire and added the already prepared ingredients as directed. The soldiers peeked at her with curiosity. There were some surprised murmurs.

When at last she got the mixture to boil and draw the herbs a bit, she poured some of it out with a ladle and returned to Adhemar. He was sitting by one of the more seriously wounded soldiers, whose abdomen was all wrapped in bandages.

“Okay,” the monk said, “pull up.” The soldiers propped himself up on his elbows with a groan, and Adhemar began unwrapping him.

The outer layers were clean, but the deeper ones were crusted with dry blood, the stains getting larger with every pass. Eventually Adhemar made it to the one that was laid directly on the skin, and it was stiff, rusty and stuck to the soldier’s body; the man hissed and winced as Adhemar peeled it off, parting it from the skin with his fingers, and revealing a huge black gash underneath, running horizontally through his entire stomach.

“It’s a good thing you got so fat, Metrannus” said a young bald soldier from the next bunk over. “Without that lard to protect you they’d have gutted you like a fish.”

“Oh do shut up,” gasped Metrannus, rubbing his sweating forehead. Adhemar took a clean cloth, soaked it in Gabrielle’s bowl, and began washing the old blood away.

“What happened to you?” asked Gabrielle.

Metrannus looked at her. “Well, my lady, I chased after the Kontarians after they retreated before Titulus. Shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have done that, none of us. I’m just running through the trees after my mate Maurentius, when all of sudden one of those bastards jumps out and spears him, right through the neck! I barely even knew what happened, when there’s another one, with a dagger, right next to me, and slash!” He indicated his stomach. “If my other mates weren’t right behind me to chase them off and carry me away, I’d be a goner for sure.”

“They’re savages, but they’re smart savages,” said an older, bearded soldier from across the room. “They know exactly when and how to get you.”

“They’re cowards, that’s what they are,” replied the bald one. He couldn’t be much older than Gabrielle. “Won’t fight in the open like men, just this constant hiding and harassing. They get into your head, mate. You’re afraid to take a leak under a tree because there might be somebody up on it with a spear.” He grabbed his own, short spear that he kept by his bedside for no discernible reason and started fidgeting with it nervously.

“Those forests are alive and against us, I swear. All this time and we haven’t even found any of their villages! The trails just circle around, and I was starting to believe that they shift while you aren’t looking! It’s like those people are ghosts, maybe they don’t have villages at all. That whole place is crazy.”

Adhemar now wiped his cloth directly over Metrannus’s wound.

“Aaah, sssshhhiiiit. Yeah, it’s all this uncertainty that’s the worst. Wish I could lay my hands on one of them in broad daylight, we’d see what’s what.”

The bald soldier stopped playing with his spear and smiled. “Hey, you know what? There is a Kontarian scout in the dungeon right here.”

“Oh word?”

“Yeah. Jovin told me yesterday. How about, when we get a little better, we sneak there? You’ll hold him, and I,” he thrust the spear up, “shove this up his ass and see where it stops. We’ll see how tough they are then.”

“And then Titulus will smash in your dumbass skulls for fucking with his prisoner, won’t he?”

A profound silence fell over the room, followed by a general clearing of throats and sideways glances. This was not exactly the kind of a turn of phrase that everyone expected to hear from a princess.

“Child, but do mind your language!” Pelagius had apparently returned to the nave unnoticed sometime in the past few minutes to witness the scene. Gabrielle stood up, feeling veins pulse in her forehead. Damnit, calm yourself. Calm yourself and cover this up.

“I’m sorry, father. But General Titulus had sent this valuable prisoner here for our safekeeping, and if these men think they can lay their hands on him…”

“I was just kidding,” the bald soldier said meekly, laying his spear down. “A bit of soldierly humour, my lady.” The others nodded and assented with awkward tones. Pelagius smiled.

“Well, this was maybe a little crude for such courtly company. But I’m sure nobody meant any harm. Gabrielle, maybe take the soiled bandages and wash them clean in the lavatorium? When you’re done you’ll have your discussion session.”

She adjusted the collar around her neck and gathered up the bandages. As she was leaving the room, she was pretty sure she heard snickers start behind her. She wondered how hard would it be smuggle in some hot pepper and blend it unnoticed with the yarrow.


	25. Pride and Punishment

She was still simmering when she joined the three monks at their usual table. They weren’t exactly cheerful either. Attending to the soldiers, together with the news from Redona, prompted them to skip right to discussing the wars, without even pretending that the discussion was for Gabrielle’s education.

“They’re scared! They’re plain scared!” said Vulmar, tapping his fist on the table top. Adhemar launched a tirade on the inadequate preparations, probably caused by traitors and saboteurs who ought to be caught and executed. Valdemar pulled his hood up and just glared at some point far off in space.

Adhemar seemed relieved with his torrent of accusations. “Still, Titulus is a great general, and his men are good. I still hope that the gods will send him victory.”

Vulmar leaned back and looked to the ceiling. “The great teacher, Tobias Aquafresca, whose breath was like a rejuvenating cool breeze to our faith, wrote in his Differentia that the gods, when they wish to punish us, will send us punishments matching our sins – say, the lazy will be struck with maladies which contain them in their beds and make them unable to move, things like that. Maybe the gods want to send us such strange message by plaguing us with these defeats? Maybe this is a punishment for our ineffectual moral stance, our persistent failings as a society…”

Suddenly, Valdemar exploded. “We don’t even need divine punishment, we bring all of this on ourselves! Look at us! Look at people in the cities, living in comfort for all their days, look at the peasants, thinking only about the next festival, forgetting the gods, avoiding all hardship! This is how it ends! We have exiled courage from this land! We have exiled all our old grit! Our elders are schemers! Our young are sluts, drunkards and wastrels! There is no place for courage or self-sacrifice if you only want to give in to temptations all day! We’re ruined! This country needs to be cleansed, cleansed with holy fire, its order destroyed and the old ways restored!”

The other two hurried to contain him a bit, but he kept rambling on about the death of courage and valour and the triumph of gluttony and lust and sloth for about a half hour, before at last he got tired and calmed down, sagging in his chair. The other two glanced at each other, and decided that this was perhaps enough discussion for the day.

* * *

 

Gabrielle headed for her chamber to wash her face in cold water, as if she hoped this would wash all the craziness away. She told Mista that she’d be out until sundown again, catching up on her reading, and headed out.

The chapel garden was empty and quiet as usual. She started to wonder why none of the castle denizens ever strolled here. Maybe they were afraid that Valdemar would notice them and chat them up.

She told Aerin all about her day with the soldiers and the monks, except for the spear bit.

“Seems like everyone’s getting a bit tense,” he remarked.

“Yeah. Not very big fans of Kontarians, either.”

“Aww. Do you like Kontarians, at least?”

“They’re okay, I guess.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”

She smiled and lay down on the grass, closing her eyes.

“I’ve heard all sorts of crazy stories about Kontaria around here.”

“What stories?”

“That you sacrifice children to your gods, for example.”

“Why would any god want child sacrifice? The little shits just run around screaming all the time, you don’t need that in your divine halls.”

“I think there was also something about drinking the blood of virgins.”

“That would be gross and not really worth the hassle, if you ask me.”

“Also that your men have sex with men and women with women.”

“That counts as a crazy story in Harmen?”

She opened her eyes and looked to the sky. It was framed, as always, with Behem’s overbearing walls and towers.

“I mean, the Harmeni do the sex part all the time, but you’re never supposed to admit it in public. You see, people think it makes men effeminate and women—eh, everyone thinks women are unstable anyways. But that’s the issue with this entire shit kingdom. Everyone is scared to death to appear effeminate, or weak, or just, I dunno. Not a gigantic piece of shit. Not sure where did this come from, but it’s like this shell that everyone is for some reason wearing.”

“You sure you like Harmen all that much?”

“I mean, there are sides of it that are alright. But I’m very far away from them right now. You can survive and thrive here, you just gotta be smart.” Or ruthless. She thought of people who have made it. She thought of Titulus, son of a common soldier who was now a general. She thought of Oren, who rose from minor nobility to be the Duke of Haratraz. Gods, the stories they told about that guy! Whole rival families surgically removed from existence, not out of cruelty but just out of cold calculation. Okay, there did exist influential nobles who seemed decent – the Lady Tessa, whom she met at the capital, for example. But how much agency did she really, truly have? Gabrielle waved her hand. “Anyway, how’s the book?”

Aerin shifted on his feet. “I’m going through it. I’m more used to sagas, really.”

Gabrielle looked thoughtful. “I’ve discovered this book in the Great Hall library. There are a lot of them there, and they’re surprisingly… decent, diverse. An open, curious mind must have once gathered them. Might mean there was a time when Behem wasn’t all that terrible.” She picked at the hem of her dress. “Well, there they sit on their shelves, waiting for better times. What’s the difference between a book and a saga, anyway?”

“Well, sagas aren’t written and read, they’re spoken. Or, when done proper, kind of sing-spoken. Like, there’s a beat to the words.”

“So what, you have to remember them whole?”

“Well, the bards do. Of course, you can also just tell them normal. Everyone knows them, but you can always tweak bits or focus on unexpected things, depending who’s listening. That way they’re alive, constantly changing.”

She sat up. “Aerin, tell me a saga!”

He faltered. “Ah, I wasn’t ever a good teller.”

There was that predatory smile and that princess glint in her eyes again. “Boy, you owe me! You can get down on the floor, I’ll sit here and kick on the bars if anyone’s coming.”

He shrugged, stepped down and took the stage. “I’m not doing the singing thing, though!” Okay, sagas. What’s a good saga for starters? The Saga of the Blue Gemstones, that should do it. Everybody likes that one.

He introduced the setting properly, ancient Kontaria with its supernatural creatures and talking animals and spirits walking upon the earth. He told of the dying sorcerer, and his wish to revenge himself on the world. He went through the story of his hapless acolyte, their struggles against the ruthless warlords of the forest, the trouble caused by the unwise badger, the reproach of the one-eyed bear, the demon disguised as a chicken farmer, the tragedy of the gale, and finally, of the sorcerer’s death and the acolyte’s escape. When he was finished, it was almost evening. All in all, he thought he did a pretty good job. Gabrielle must have thought so to, because she had barely moved throughout the entire thing.

“Wow,” she said. “And you know more of those?”

“Dozens.”

“Shit.” She was silent for a while. “Well, turns out you can tell sagas perfectly okay.”

“Yeah.” He jumped to the window and his usual foothold. “I’ll tell you more if you’d like. We have eight more days, right?”

“Eight more days.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “I’m still figuring out how to get you past Dodo.”

“Any progress?”

“Some.”

“Okay.” He looked at her, and something turned inside him. “Gabrielle, if this whole thing puts you in danger, then don’t do it, okay? Just slip me a razor or something, I’ll off myself the easy way before Titulus comes.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He picked at the iron flakes coming off the bars. “I just don’t want anyone to take risks for me just because I’m a dumbass who got caught, okay? It fucks me up that everyone is in danger while I’m locked here, useless.”

“You are in danger, you moron.”

“You know what I mean. I fucked up and yet I’m comfortable here, and eat well, and… I spend time with you, while people who are actually doing their jobs properly are dying in this war.”

Oh, fuck’s sakes. She propped herself on straight arms and looked up to the clouds. Now that she thought about it, she’d probably be pissed off in his situation too.

“It’s your pride that brought you here, isn’t it? You wanted to be the great hero of the entire Kontaria who brought home an Eagle of Harmen.”

He dug his nail into the flaking bar quite hard.

“I guess.”

“You know what an ironic punishment is?”

“A what?”

“You feel guilty because you don’t feel punished for your pride? I think that’s the most fitting punishment you can take. You just sit here with nothing to be proud of. Your task is to just accept that something good might happen to you without you doing something to deserve it, to kill that self-hate within you. Self-hate is so Harmen, anyway. There. Isn’t this a brilliant thought?”

He blinked. “I mean, it’s either brilliant or total horseshit. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Yeah, do.”

“I’m provisionally leaning towards total horseshit, though.”

She snorted. They were quiet for a while, just enjoying each other’s presence. The clouds took on their evening colours, pink and gold and blue. A swallow passed low overhead. The calm of an early summer evening can be felt even in places like Behem.

“I love the sky at this time of day and year,” she said.

“I haven’t even seen the sky for days.”

“What?” she turned to him.

“Yeah, that nook the window’s in blocks my view. Also, I can’t touch sunlight from here. Even if I reach out like this,” he extended his arm all the way, to the grass; she shied away instinctively, “I always miss a couple inches.”

“That’s shit.”

“Isn’t it.”

She watched his hand, with its long fingers, lying helplessly on the ground. It certainly wasn’t reaching any further beyond.

She slid her own hand towards it, and their fingertips touched. He looked up at her, mystified.

“Just a few more days, Aerin.” She went further and slowly stroked the outside of his palm, before withdrawing. “Which brings me back, I need to go figure out the whole Dodo thing. I thought I’d wander around the armoury above and the wall to the gatehouse, maybe something will occur to me.”

Only now he hazarded to move, drawing his hand back. “Okay. Same time tomorrow?”

“Same time tomorrow, my dirty little slut.”

“I’ll fucking strangle you.”

She laughed. No. No, you wouldn’t.


	26. Many Thoughts of Little Use

She moved freely through all of the castle. If the soldiers found it strange that she had taken a sudden interest in the armoury, inspecting its contents, dimensions, spacing of windows and many other details, they certainly didn’t show it.

The room was on the first floor of the massive tower and directly above the dungeon. It contained all sorts of chain and leather armour, bows and crossbows and ammunition, swords, spears, polearms and maces, shields and bucklers, shin pads and wrist guards. What it manifestly did not contain was ideas.

There was a door in there which opened directly to the top of the walls. She walked out and looked over the battlements. Beneath was the deep ditch carved out of the hill and protecting the castle’s front; great old trees were swaying in the wind beyond it and below her. The night was making its slow, gentle fall.

She leaned on the crenellations. There simply must be a way to get Aerin past Dodo. Maybe if she dresses up as Paula and imitates her voice and it’s pretty dark she can trick Dodo and—

Alright, but let’s keep to plans which aren’t idiotic as shit.

Maybe she was onto something, though? Maybe instead of tricking Dodo, she should trick Paula or Clement into calling Dodo away for five minutes? Cause some accident that would urgently require Dodo’s great strength to fix? But what? Pin Paula to the floor with an iron chandelier dropping from the ceiling? Make an ox sit on Clement?

She thumped her forehead on the stone. It’s been such a long day.

Her thoughts started floating.

What if she could get him out of the dungeon early in the night? Maybe she could smuggle him to her chamber for a few hours, before the carts left. She’d like a few hours with him, one on one, very much. If only she could be sure that she could trust him…

She sighed with sad desire and cradled her head inside her bent elbow. She believed, each day more, that he would never to harm her. She believed there was some genuine connection growing between them. He always treated her like an equal, that low-born foreigner prisoner. To him, she was just Gabrielle foremost. He liked her – seemed to like her – because he felt they were likeminded, not because of her birth. His attitude was beginning to rub off to her.

When she took him he was tied up, unable to respond to her. What she’d like the most in the world right now was to be with him free, let him do whatever he wants to her, unleash his passion on her, feel him run those hands which she kept avoiding all over her naked body. Wouldn’t it be exciting, exhilarating, ecstatic, to just get completely ravished by that boy.

She lifted up her head. She had felt genuine connections growing before, and she had been wrong. It was better not to trust feelings all that much. Besides, this is all theoretical anyway. You still don’t know how to get him out.

* * *

 

In his long dim hours he thought of her. He thought of them.

He saw that she was afraid of coming near. This saddened him, but he thought he understood. How much connection did they even have, after all?

He’d decided not to bring this up with her. It was, in general, better not risk to upsetting her. Because she was to him more than Gabrielle. She was also his only hope.

He wished she was only Gabrielle. He wished he could talk with her freely, express himself freely, not having to calculate to keep her on his side. It was not that he ever actually had to deceive her so far – in fact, he was surprisingly at ease genuinely opening up to her, letting her walk around his mind, take a look at his fears. She really seemed to get him, she even made him feel a little better about his insecurities. The whole ironic punishment thing sounded ridiculous, but that was not even the point. He let her see his shame, and she didn’t shirk away – she tried to understand, accepted him, tried to make him feel better. He wished he had more to give back.

But in the midst of all that it was still there, that potential barrier, that implicit insincerity, threatening, lurking silent between their minds.

He just wanted to be alone with her, no ulterior motives, no expected favours. Just he and she, alone, and nothing else in the world.

Well. A boy can dream.

* * *

 

Plan fifty-three. Dislodge the wasps’ nest from the rafters of the smithy. Throw it into Dodo’s room. Lead Aerin out in the ensuing confusion.

This is getting ridiculous. Fuck!


	27. A Kingdom by the Sea

“So yeah, I’m kind of stumped,” she admitted.

Aerin cocked his head. “We could go with the one where you give me something to pick the lock. And, like, some heavy armour. Maybe I’ll overpower him.”

“Maybe you’ll just punch right through this wall.”

“Maybe.”

It was late in the afternoon, and they had been talking for a couple hours. Gabrielle had been trying to figure something out for the whole morning – the monks having decided that she won’t be helping in the infirmary, and focusing on her reading instead (young women around soldiers are a way to weaken everyone’s moral fibre, anyways). But even with several hours alone in the scriptorium, the problem still defeated her. With time growing shorter and her anxiety higher, she’d decided to turn to Aerin to brainstorm. So far, though, thinking together had brought no results much better than what she was considering alone.

“You don’t have any hidden abilities to get past him, do you.”

“Let’s see, all my life I’ve been helping out with the fields or with the horses. He’s not a horse, so that leaves my agricultural expertise. I was very good at weeding, and also at making scarecrows.”

 “That’s good. If we ever have to fight a flock of very small yet ravenous birds, you’ll be the hero of the day.”

“Maybe I should talk Dodo into just coming with me. He’d like it in Kontaria. You’d have to order him to talk to me, though.”

Gabrielle grimaced. “Well, I’ll admit this is a new idea, at least.” There is still time, she reminded herself. A whole week. There was no way they wouldn’t come up with something, just no way.

Overhead a seagull drifted bright against the sky, heading east. Gabrielle blinked. What business could have brought it this far inland? Why would you be here, above Behem, when you had the free choice to be literally anywhere else in the world? Then she reflected, and touched her pocket.

“I’ve got something for you, by the way.” She reached out and carefully placed near the bars a small flat and round object. He picked it up and examined it, puzzled; it was a hand mirror, in a thin tin frame. “I thought if you held it out at an angle, you could maybe see the sky. Might be silly, but…”

He extended out his hand as far as he could and rotated the mirror. On its surface the lurid stones whizzed past, and where they ended, the endless blue expanse opened. He stared. High above him, far far far away, clouds were floating lightly by. He had almost forgotten the concept of a long distance. The outside great world still existed beyond his dungeon. It was all still there.

Gabrielle sat motionless, observing the intent focus in his eyes. His eyes were themselves like the sky at that moment, she thought, two lit up pieces lost underground.

Eventually he withdrew the mirror, and gave her that broad, teeth-full grin of his.

“Thanks,” he said. “That’s real nice, actually.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

He leaped to the floor and stepped back from the window, to stretch his ankles. This constant standing on his toes was starting to take a toll on his feet. He was beginning to wonder when will they start to deform to the shape of the gap in the wall. She huddled over to the bars and watched him walk on. Ah, why has fate brought you here, you beautiful boy? Can’t it see that this isn’t where you belong?

“Hey, Aerin?”

“Hmm?”

“What are you going to do when you get back home?”

He leaned on the hallway grating, considering this. “Well, I’ll help out with whatever’s left of the war. I’ll gloat to Leapfrog that I nailed a princess. And eventually, I’ll become a warrior.”

“Hopefully without any wars to fight in.”

“Yeah. I’d kick too much ass. It’d be unfair.” He ignored her look. “What about you? What’s going to happen to you?”

She lay on her stomach, chin on intertwined fingers. “They’ll have to let me out of here sooner or later. I’m gonna get back to the capital, where I’m gonna live as I had, just more careful this time. And eventually I’m gonna get married off to someone, become a lady of some noble house.”

“That sounds shit.”

“Sometimes, but not necessarily. I think I’ll handle myself pretty well in Harmeni court politics. If you’re smart enough, you can do fine. I just hope I’ll live in the capital, and not in some shit place like Behem. As long as that happens, I’ll manage.”

He gave her a good long look. Her eyes were cast to the side, and she was calm now, thoughtful. She seemed at peace with her fate, if unenthusiastic. Yet he remembered that moment when he’d looked deep into her, when passion brought her guard down, when through her naked body he thought he felt her spirit revealed, a spirit unyielding, free and affectionate. Would she find any happiness in the life she described? She jutted her jaw forward and grazed her upper lip with her lower teeth, mulling over her own reflections. She was so beautiful to him right then, so fascinating.

“It would be such a waste for you to become an ordinary noble lady somewhere.”

“Would it? What should I become then, in your opinion?”

“An evil queen.”

She laughed. That boy. “You know what, with your muscle and my brain, we could collaborate. We’ll conquer ourselves our own tiny kingdom by the sea. You’ll be the army, I’ll do the evil ruling.”

He drummed his fingers on the iron bars. “Awesome. Seems like a complete country to me, all basics covered.”

“Until we starve to death.”

“Ah, but you forget I more or less know how to plant you a vegetable garden! Also I can swim, like the dolphins can swim. I’ll dive and catch fish and shrimp, for our kingdom by the sea.”

Her eyes brightened. She leaned forward and wove one of her hands in through the window, fingers resting freely on the cell’s wall. “I can see it now. You’ll come back with baskets of the stuff at sundown. I’ll lick the salt off your skin, and no business of the state will ever get done, because of all the fucking that will get in the way.” She shifted her legs. Great, now he got her to think of his naked body. Her abdomen tensed from the inside.

He licked his teeth. “Gods, you really are good at this politics stuff.”

Her lip curled, half playful, half derisive. There it was, that smile of hers again. “It would never work, though.”

“Why?”

“You can’t listen to orders. What would be the point of reigning over you?”

He folded his hands over his chest and pouted. “I so can listen to orders! I’m the best order listener in the world!”

A strand of hair fell over his eye. He looked like such a dork, pouting like that! So unbearably adorable. She rubbed her fingers furiously on the stone. The tension in her abdomen rose, like a tidal wave, like the sea rises. She looked back to the garden. Empty as always. Distant, normal sounds from the courtyard. Aah. She turned to him, and gripped the window bars.

“Can you? I want to see that. First, I order you to strip naked.” It was so cute that, caught off-guard, he still blushed at this.

“We’ve done this before, haven’t we?”

“I want to take it further. You’re listening to me or not?”

He cocked his head. Can’t listen to orders? He’ll show her. Defiance by obedience.

She could look at this forever, she thought, as he complied with her wish and stood nude against the grating. His cock was hard already.

“I see you’re excited about this.”

“I just sorta got invested in your political project.”

“Good. I want you to imagine that you’re fucking me.”

“Ah?”

“Get your hand on that dick, boy, and think of my pussy.”

He smiled sheepishly, brought his hips forward to give her a better view, and gave his cock a few uncertain strokes.

She tightened her grip on the bars and licked her lips. “Good. Keep going.” He looked up, into her eyes, and then to the side. He exhaled unevenly. He felt his own firmness, stiffness, excitement. He wasn’t too sure about being so exposed before her. Her gaze, reaching from above, was on his body. His mind raised a question: did he really want to be so vulnerable, before her, before that menace of a smile?

His cock gave a happy jolt, his diaphragm tingled, his heart hammered in his throat, his very spine lit up. Wordless, his entire self answered him, an answer overwhelming, an answer definite. This was beyond a wanting. This was a delightful, breathtaking imperative. He began stroking himself, with conviction, with determination.

She spoke again. “Use your other hand. Imagine I’m caressing you. I want to touch these abs.” His left hand went to his stomach, sliding across his skin. “Yeah, you like that?”

He muttered in agreement, closed his eyes and raised his head. “You have a sexy neck. I want to touch it.” His hand obeyed, and went to his throat. He felt pleasure mounting rapidly. His knees weakened. He breathed deeper.

She watched his chest swell and fall, his ribs moving under the skin. She pressed her forehead to the bars. She wanted to touch him, for real, so bad. She saw how much he got into it, and it astonished her, exhilarated her. She was wet. Her voice grew low and hoarse. “I want to play with your nipples.” He spread out his fingers and rubbed both of them, with his thumb and his middle finger. His mind was swept away, lost in a powerful current, and delighted at its own embarrassment. He was so thrilled to do whatever she wanted. He was so eager to let her mess with him. Why did it feel this good to be in her power? His lips parted and he moaned. He was very close.

“Who’s your evil queen?”

The answer came out at once, unchecked by his conscious mind. “Gabrielle.”

“Cum for me, boy.” He flinched, and muscles flexed all over him. “Look at me! I want you to look me in the eyes and surrender to me.”

His gaze met hers. His mouth opened, twisted. She got in one final question. “Who are you cumming for?”

Within him, all was aligned. All bits of his body and mind were delighted, and compelled, and certain to answer. “Gabrielle. Gabrielle!” he moaned, gasped, and came. Thick loads of sperm fell heavily on the floor, their splashing noise echoing all over the dungeon. His legs refused to support this whole party anymore. He groaned, slid to his knees, and breathed in deep.

She held up a fist to her mouth and bit down on her knuckles. Now, this will do. This will fucking do.

The silence, for a long moment, was only disturbed with their breathing.

He suddenly felt very, very naked. The force which subjected him so thoroughly now subsided, leaving him dazed and uncertain. He opened his eyes and flicked some cum off his right hand. “You’re the worst queen. Look at the mess you’ve made!”

She took one more cautious look behind her, finding nothing. “Come here,” she said.

He glanced at her. She was gripping the bars hard, the bones on the backs of her hands visible through her skin. He blew out air through his mouth and approached the window. She drew back when he jumped up and gripped a bar himself, with his left hand. He showed her his right, fingers glistening.

“See? I’ll never get this off before bath time!”

Her heart pounded, and her muscles felt like jelly. She looked him in the eyes, and then at his hand. Alright, fuck it. Do what you will.

She leaned right up to him and took his hand. Before he knew what was going on she started licking his fingers, sucking off the cum. There was not much of it, a thin film on his skin. It left faint, dull salty aftertaste on her tongue and her throat. When she was done, she looked at him and smiled.

“I told you. I’m going to lick the salt off your skin.”

He gazed, awed. “Oh.”

She drew herself closer still and placed her hands on his cheeks. She could feel his breath on her lips. His eyes were very, very blue.

She kissed him, cautiously, tenderly, the bars limiting them considerably. They closed their eyes and nibbled at each other’s lips for what felt like ages. Through this blissful darkness, she suddenly felt his left hand on her neck, his fingers fondling her in a gentle, massaging caress; she inclined her whole body to that touch, and muttered his name into his mouth. She reached down to and pressed her hand to the warm bare skin between his shoulder blades, the closest to a hug they could manage; she could feel his heart beat.

Eventually, they broke away, but remained there both pressed to the bars, forehead to forehead, eye to eye. She sighed deeply and ruffled his hair.

“You’re my favourite subject, boy.”

“I sure as fuck hope so.” He licked his lips. “You taste like cum, do you know that?”

She smiled, a languid smile. “Your cum tastes great, don’t complain.” She lay her cheek down on the stone and broke out with a bright little giggle. She dug her fingertips lightly into his back and rubbed his muscles. He sighed, deep in his throat.

“Does this feel nice?”

“Mhm.” It felt, in fact, divine. Her hand traced around his shoulder blades, the nape of his neck, the shoulders themselves. He touched his lips to her hair, closed his eyes, and let himself melt under her fingers. For once, for a little while, they were at peace.


	28. Breeze

The sensation of her holding him close was still on his mind when he woke up the next day. Just the memory alone made him feel warm in the cool morning air. That, and the recognition that she trusted him to touch her.

He rose and stretched out his arms above his head. He’d been so starved for her touch. Now he only wanted more. Can the afternoon please hurry up and come?

He then recalled the show he’d given her beforehand, and he cringed and grinned at the same time. Oh man, how embarrassing. And how delightful. He’d meant every move, every moment of his submission, and despite his surface vexation, he knew that deep down he was unashamed – no, he was glad she’s seen him like that. Seen right into him, and enjoyed what she saw. Some elation, light and airy, filled his insides; and also a confidence that he could give back to her the happiness that she gave to him. He wanted to get to her the same way she’s gotten to him; he felt that she’d enjoy that very much. Besides, the girl needed to be shown her place a bit. Who does she think she is, bossing people around like that? Alright, well, she’s a princess. Who’s saving his life. Yeah, but, like, besides that? Yeah, exactly.

Maybe, before this is over, they’d have a chance to be with each other without any iron in the way. Maybe…

He looked around him. The cell was still and quiet, as was its habit. His thoughts were brought back to the present.

He was getting somewhat worried about the whole Dodo thing. Now that he’d been given so much hope for an escape, the thought of dying here after all was unbearable, a million times worse than before. But just like Gabrielle, he was also convinced that there must be some solution. Just gotta think.

He thought and thought, but the dungeon’s bare walls refused to provide any inspiration. He shook his head and dug out Gabrielle’s book from the straw. Maybe a fight with letters would get his brain going.

The problem with writing, he now came to think, is that the Harmeni have adapted Gebran letters, which had been invented for a completely different language. Now, in order to encode most of the sounds, they had to use some ridiculous compounds of the signs that made very little sense if you thought about it. It was a miracle the good people of Harmen ever managed to convey any meaning at all.

Still, the runic script of Kontaria and the Gebran alphabet did share some ancestry, far gone in the murk of history, and many signs were recognisable. He was making a good progress. He was pretty sure he could understand almost every sentence on the first page.

Having amused himself like that for some time, he now took out the mirror and jumped up to the window. Carefully, cradling it in his hands not to reflect any light to the courtyard, he turned it skywards. The silvery glass turned an intense blue, and in this blue Aerin saw again some scattered small clouds very high above. He smiled.

He stowed away the mirror and just swayed lazily, hugging the bars. It would still be hours until she came. He looked out to the garden, where a light breeze sometimes ruffled the grass and the tiny field flowers hidden within it. They were the same kinds that grew in Kontaria, and he knew all their names. Daisies, buttercups, clovers, nothing unusual. A bit more interesting were the plants purposefully planted there in neat beds. It didn’t take a lot of brains to realize they had been selected for medicinal, rather than ornamental, purposes. Celandine, yarrow, anise. Foxglove, lumbering bumblebees fumbling around it. There were chamomiles, swaying white on stiff stalks. There was peppermint, discreet and unassuming. There was an elderberry bush under a poplar tree; and for a moment a gust of wind moved its branches away, revealing a smaller bush behind, which was—

Oh shit!

His forehead hit the bars as he lunged forward to get a better look, but now the breeze was gone, and the branches of the elderberries slouched back to their normal place, hiding the object of his sudden attention. He craned his head, waited for the wind to pick up, tried the other window; to no avail now – the elderberries were obstinate, merciless and obscuring. He dropped down and walked impatiently around the cell. If that bush he glimpsed was what he thought it was… He bounced the implications around in his head. Yes! Perfect! He shouted for joy to the stone walls, but then tried to calm himself down. He had to make sure. Gabrielle, hurry the fuck up!


	29. The Plan

This was, apparently, his lucky day – Gabrielle freed herself from her obligations several hours earlier than usual. The three friars were still in an awful mood, so the discussion again was mostly limited to listening to Valdemar bemoan the loss of valour and courage and the old ways, etc. etc. etc. It was not long after noon that she entered the garden, humming joyfully, another excuse book in her hand. The day was hot, Behem’s old walls parching slowly in the sun, and curling up in the shadowy window niche next to Aerin seemed to her like just the perfect way to spend it.

She thought with pleasure how surprised he’d be to see her so early. Yet it was her who was surprised when, upon her coming to the window, she saw his face, wide eyed, rise up rapidly to the bars.

“Gabrielle! Do you see that elderberry bush over there?” he said urgently, without any greetings. She turned around and saw the shrub, under an old poplar.

“Yeah?”

“Okay, there’s another bush behind it. Bring me a twig from it, with leaves and berries, quick!”

She looked at him, confused. What got into him?

Nonetheless she walked to the elderberries. There was, indeed, an inconspicuous shrub right beside them. She knelt to it. It grew small, pale leaves and sprouted small, red berries, bunched in neat rows on stalks that shot off its branches. She wasn’t sure what this plant was – it looked much the same as any other berry bush. She broke off one twig a couple inches long and brought it back to Aerin, who snatched it out of her hand. She sat down in the niche, struck by his expression.

He looked at the little branch transfixed. He then took one berry, broke its skin with his nail, and smelled it. A broad, triumphant smile broke over his face.

“Oh fuck me,” he said.

“Gladly,” she replied, “but what is this?”

“This, Gabrielle,” he said, swinging the branch around and looking up at her, “is wickwort.” He burst out laughing at her blank expression, and took a moment to continue. “It has one use, only one use. The juice from the berries is a painkiller, in small doses. Up until a spoonful, say. If you take any more than that, the side-effects start.

“It starts messing with your head. You fall into a trance and sit down, for hours, staring at nothing and drooling all over yourself. People see the world in colours like the northern lights, they think that elves and gods and demons are talking to them, they barely register what’s going on around them. And all of this would be pretty neat and people would probably be growing this thing just for that, except the next day there’s consequences – well, basically you shit torrential shits and throw up for the whole day, and you wish you were dead.”

Now she wrenched the twig away from him and stared at the berries. “Okay. Okay! So if I can feed this to Dodo, do you think—”

“Yes!”

“He would just sit here and not notice me sneaking you past?”

“Gabrielle, he would barely notice a horse clop up to him and kick him in the balls!”

“Shit! And will it last the whole night?”

He tapped the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Yeah, that could be a problem. “It definitely would if you could get a draught of wickwort, not the fresh thing. Basically, if you stow away the berry paste for several months in an oak cask it grows a lot more potent. The monks must be doing this if they’re growing wickwort at all, that’s how it’s always administered.”

She thought about it. “Alright, so it’s a painkiller. Maybe they’re giving it to the wounded soldiers, I could get in the infirmary and—”

“Nah, it’s not really used for wounds. More like, internal pain. Back ache, menstrual cramps…”

She suddenly knew. “Migraines?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Paula gets migraines. And she does take something for them, she’s mentioned that! If I can get into her room…”

“Hey, don’t take extra risks…”

“Shut it, I won’t be. She’s rarely there during the day, it would just be a little tricky to get in and out without any servants noticing…” She squinted and recalled to herself the chamber. Paula occasionally invited people to talk there in privacy, and Gabrielle had the dubious honour several times, mostly during her first week at Behem. She remembered the small table with plush chairs where she sat with dread, the creepy massive bed with black canopy and black linens, an equally massive and dark wooden wardrobe, and a small cabinet by the bedside… she closed her eyes. Yes, she was pretty sure there were some flasks on the cabinet. “Yeah, I think I know exactly where she keeps it. How much do we need?”

“Well, for Dodo’s size… take as much as you can, works the same whether you overdose a little or a lot.”

She popped a berry open herself and smelled it. It had a strong, distinct smell, a lot like aniseed.

She saw it clear now. She’d wait hidden outside of the dungeon and wait for someone from the kitchens to deliver the two bowls. When Dodo goes down to bring Aerin his meal, she’d slip in, pour the drought over Dodo’s food, and get out – half a minute exploit. With Dodo knocked out, there would be plenty of time to get Aerin in the cart. By the time anyone notices he’s gone, he’s safely away. She’ll tie a rope to a wall somewhere to make it look like he escaped by foot. By the time they finish searching the castle and running around its surroundings with dogs, he’ll be in Kontaria. Dodo will have a bad next day, but Pelagius will recognize his symptoms – and Paula too, she must have been warned – so this will get him off the hook. Then they may start investigating who helped Aerin, but what proof is there to implicate Gabrielle? Not a damn thing.

This was it. A working, doable escape plan. She looked at him, astonished.

“Aerin, we got it!”

“Yeah!”

She beamed. “Come here!”

She leaned in and gave him a bar-crossed kiss, and delighted herself with his presence, his closeness, their hands reaching out; and the kiss again led to caresses, touches, rubs and messing up of hair, which went on for quite a good amount of time. Then, eventually, when they felt that have had enough, they just stayed where there were, with arms across the grille and laid on each other.

“Gabrielle?”

“Mm?”

“When you’re a noble lady already, buy a lot of Kontarian goods. Buy Kontarian horses. Our merchants go all over Harmen in peacetime. I’ll join them, I’ll seek you out. Maybe we can meet this way, someplace, sometime.”

She was staring straight into his eyes, brushing his cheekbone with her fingertips. She lit up. “Yes. Yeah! Seek me out! I’ll be waiting, even if it takes ages!” He smiled at her, a wonderful plan for the future made. Future, yeah! That was a thing again!


	30. There You Are

“We will have several hours between knocking out Dodo and putting you in a sack,” she said. “I’ll use them well, send you off in style.”

He gripped her harder. His cock pressed against the cold wall. He wanted her so, so bad.

“Gabrielle, is anyone in the courtyard?”

“No, they’ve all hidden from the sun.”

“Okay. Drop your undies and slip your legs in here.”

She gave him an incredulous laugh. “Are you stupid?”

“Yeah. But aside of that, I want to eat you out.”

This was the worst idea she’d ever heard. But also, she was wet, her heart was pumping like mad, and his smile was unbelievably gorgeous.

She scurried out of the niche. She looked around. There was nobody. She looked to any windows that might be overlooking – there was only one, really, in a tower above the chapel, which belonged to a room that as far as she knew was never visited. She lifted up her dress and grabbed her underwear. She looked to the courtyard again – all clear. With a shaking hand she pulled the undies off to her ankles, stepped over them, and threw them in Aerin’s face. She climbed legs first into the niche and put her feet between the bars on each side of his head.

He threw her underwear back over his shoulder as her shoes moved past his ears, and more and more of smooth leg slid into the cell. In front of his eyes, her pussy was coming towards him, glistening and ready, a strip of pubic hair above it; finally, with her inner thighs hugging his cheeks, it stopped, right by his face.

He gripped her leg; his fingers sunk into the delicate flesh.

“You’re a really beautiful girl, you know that?”

“Yes, obviously,” she said, arching her neck back. The coast was still clear. “Well, enjoy your meal!”

He touched his lips to her skin and started kissing up her inner thigh, unhurried; she was soft, and delightful. He leaned his head downward and his hair fell over between her legs, brushing past and tickling; she hissed and tried to shift herself forward still, cursing the iron bars. He smiled, grazed her skin with his teeth, and let her squirm a little, his left hand travelling over to her hip, to feel her movements, the way she swayed.

He’d have liked to tease her like that for a long long time, but that time was very precious right now; with a grunt he faced forward, where she was all exposed before him.

From above, he took her outer lips between his finger and his thumb and gave them a gentle squeeze. Lazily, slowly, he made a rolling movement, watching as her pussy quivered by its own under his pressure, her muscles instinctively contracting in a rhythm; she clenched her teeth and directed all her breathing through her nose, trying to remain quiet; her clit was in his grip, and all her most vulnerable parts his to play with, and within her tension was rising.

He let her go, leaned in, and placed an earnest kiss on her pussy, coating his lips with her juices. With the tip of his tongue dipped and touched her clitoris, flicked, licked, circled, danced around it; she couldn’t keep in a groan as nerve endings slid on nerve endings, exciting, arousing, communing, wet and warm. His cock was now poking straight into the wall; he readjusted himself, found a stable position, and with his fingers spread her inner lips wide, and gave a small pleased sigh at the sight that unfolded.

But there was more to be won here by feeling and tasting than by looking; he slid his tongue into her opening, dwelling for a moment on this favourite place of his; then relaxed it flat against her, and from the neck gave her a good, honest, long lick, along her delicate surface, all the way up to the clitoris. Her hip jolted; he repeated the movement, and again, this time pushing harder into her flesh right beneath the clit; she moaned, reached out and gripped him by the hair; and he had to be very careful not to scrape her with his teeth as he grinned to that. Yeah. I got you now, my pretty.

He kept lapping, she kept quivering. She arched her head back and gave a cursory glance behind her, but her attention was focused down, between her legs, on Aerin’s smooth movements, slow pass after slow pass; it was so tempting to just close her eyes and get lost in the feeling.

He now changed what he was doing. He locked his lips around her clit and started sucking, gently, steadily. His head bobbed forward and back, and so did her hips; for a moment, there was confusion, and then they synched, found their rhythm. His tongue circled around again, pressing softly, looking for sensitivity, for a jolt, for a moan, for the place to tease.

“Yes, Aerin, fuck…” she said, uselessly. He slid his finger inside her. She tightened her grip on his hair. His tongue, his lips, his finger, they filled up her world. The hand on which she was supporting her weight trembled a bit.

He felt so, so good. She couldn’t breathe evenly, dizzy with pleasure. She pushed herself further down, to give him better access to her, to let him suck evenly, surely…

She thought she heard a footfall behind her. Her head snapped back. Below the branches of the nearest yew, she saw the bottom of a sapphire robe and a pair of shoes, coming into the garden.

She swore and kicked out, disentangling her legs from the bars in panic. Aerin, suddenly out of grip, lost his balance and fell backwards, barely managing to land on his feet. She scraped her knee hard on the coarse iron, but she got out; she rolled out of the niche, dropped her dress down, grabbed the book, sat down against the wall, put her legs flat on the grass, and brushed hair away from her face. She glanced up. The intruder was only now emerging from behind the tree. She dropped her eyes to the book. She put it the correct side up and unsuccessfully tried to steady her breathing.

With even, poised steps, chin lifted up, keys jingling on their ring, Clement walked into the garden. He saw Gabrielle immediately. Some triumphant excitement briefly crossed his face, but it was quickly replaced with his regular glib smile.

“My lady! There you are!”

“Mhm,” she muttered shakily. Her heart was beating about a thousand times per second. Her fingers were shaking, her knee was burning, and her pussy was wet and naked under her dress. Clement, if you could please, please, please go the fuck away right now, that would be great.

The majordomo, however, clearly intended to do no such thing. Slowly, treading heavily, he walked right up to her and crouched down, looking inquisitively into her face. She was flushed, she knew. She hoped it didn’t show that much in the sharp sun. She made one more attempt to collect all her nerves, and lifted her eyes to his.

He kept her in silence for a very, very long moment. Finally, he smiled and spoke.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time here recently, haven’t you?”

“Have I?” her heart, which was beginning to calm down, rushed faster again. He leaned into the niche and looked through the window. The prisoner was sitting against the wall, his head resting heavily on his forearms with his face hidden, apparently asleep or in a stupor. Clement moved away, back to Gabrielle.

“Yes, I think so. You used to spend your free time in the Great Hall, and now you’re barely there.”

She looked at him. He apparently said all that he wanted to, and just stared. A fly landed on her damp forehead, and she swiped it away.

“Well,” she said, at a high pitch. Her breath was still pretty quick. “Now that the weather is nice, this is a good place to read, I think.”

“Read?”

“Mhm. Book.” She waved said book at him.

He stroked his trimmed beard. Then he smiled yet again, a smile that disturbed her more than anything else, though she did not know why. “Gabrielle, I wanted to talk to you about something important. Will you join me in my study?”

“Can’t we talk here?”

“No.”

What was with this man’s look today? He stared like a vulture. Also, since when did he address her by her name?

She got up, unsteadily, and he rose beside her. He walked her out of the garden. As they were rounding the yew tree, she threw a final look at Aerin’s window. She did not like the look of this, at all.

When they were in the open, he stopped. “Go first and wait for me, please. I have one small thing I need to take care of.”

She nodded and went on. She was very glad to be rid of him, even for a short moment, to collect herself and think.

He watched her disappear in the inner courtyard gate. Then he turned around and sprinted to the entrance to the dungeon.

“Dodo!” he shouted, entering the foreroom. The guard was at that moment occupied with trying to balance a fork on the back of his palm; he jumped up, sending it with a racket to the floor.

“Sir!” he boomed.

“Has Princess Gabrielle ever talked to you about the prisoner?”

Dodo replied nothing, but looked incredibly guilty.

“Dodo!”

“She… she asked to see him once, sir. I let her in and they talked for ten minutes, sir.”

Clement threw his hands in the air. “Dodo, I expressly told you never to let anyone to the prisoner!”

The guard looked like he was on the verge of tears. “I know, sir, but her being a royal princess, sir, and a granddaughter to a king, sir, and she asked so nicely, sir and…”

Clement pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright. Dodo, alright. Calm down. Go down there and chain up the prisoner, I want to talk to him at once.”


	31. Lights Out

In that first moment, when Gabrielle suddenly moved away and he fell down, Aerin didn’t know what was happening. He landed on the floor and for a second just stood there, startled; it was only when he heard Clement’s voice that he realized they might have been caught.

Then, to his terror, he saw Gabrielle’s underwear, snow-white on the dungeon floor. He snatched it and tucked it under his bedding, to join with the book and the mirror. He then sat down by the wall and pretended to sleep, listening to the talk outside. His heart was pounding, but at least he immediately lost his erection.

He's heard all that they said, and his skin crawled. Clement knew that something was going on. Clement knew, and Gabrielle was in deep shit.

He heard them get up and walk away. He sat still for a moment yet, and then realized.

_He’s gonna come here._

He leapt to his bedding and recovered the book, the mirror, and the underwear. He looked frantically around. There was no better place to hide them.

Barely even thinking, he tore off a strip of material off his leggings and wrapped her things all together in a bundle.

The door in the room above opened. Clement shouted out at Dodo.

Aerin jumped to the window. The nearest juniper shrub was maybe ten feet away. He pushed his right arm out of the bars with the bundle underhand. He made a few trial moves. He’d have to make the throw entirely from his elbow and wrist. The package had about the right weight.

The inner door opened and he heard Dodo run down the stairs.

He made the throw. The bundle made an arc, rotating in the air, hit the grass a foot from the shrub, bounced, and landed underneath it. It rested, brown-coloured against the earth.

He jumped down and rested his arms on his knees at exactly the moment Dodo appeared, a pair of manacles jangling in his hand.

“You, hands!” he bellowed.

And now would come the hard part.

Dodo did his usual thing with locking, locking and unlocking, and soon Aerin stood in the middle of the cell with his hands high above his head, fettered to the ceiling. One of his calves was naked where he had ripped his legging, but he doubted that would be noticed. He breathed in and braced himself.

In, melodious with the clinking of the keys, walked Clement. He stepped right up to Aerin, their faces inches away.

Clement smiled.

“Well, then, you piece of shit, what do have to say so interesting that a princess keeps coming to listen?”

Aerin’s mind raced. He obviously would know by now from Dodo that Gabrielle had been here once. He’d figured out that she was coming to the garden to talk to him. But maybe he didn’t know the other things. He licked his lips, which still tasted of her.

“I only talked to her like twice for a few minutes, she…”

With no warning, Clement punched him with full force in the stomach. All air escaped him; his stomach muscles were all stretched out and had no way to curl up; like a drowning man, he struggled to breathe in again. The pain was overpowering, welling up, right from the diaphragm. Fuck, he thought, his vision fluttering. What is it with these people and sucker punches?

Clement grabbed him by the cheeks and drew himself even closer. Aerin could see all the individual hair in his eyebrows, growing sparse over the ridge of his brow.

“Don’t lie to me. What were your meetings like?”

Aerin finally gasped in enough air to answer.

“She… fuck… she was just curious about Kontaria. She asked me about life there, that sort…”

He was now ready and flexed his abs before Clement’s fist connected, and he put all his weight on the fetters so that his body bounced backwards like a punching bag. It wasn’t much help. He felt his mouth water up, his eyes tear up, and his muscles convulse. He would have screamed, if his whole chest wasn’t contracted already.

Now, to be different, Clement pulled him close by his hair. “Okay, same question. But this time, the truth.”

Aerin wheezed. He spat down on the floor. He opened his mouth, but no sound came.

“Speak up!”

Aerin flinched. “I swear. It’s true.”

Clement stared into him. Aerin was sure his stomach would burst if he got hit one more time.

But the majordomo now let go of him. He took a few steps, circling around his captive, as Aerin fought to breathe, to keep the pain down, to hold himself together.

When Clement returned to his original spot, he was smiling again. He put his hand on Aerin’s shoulder – a gesture which surely would have been more effective had said shoulder not been held up by the chains.

“Alright, maybe I overreacted here a bit. Listen to me. The princess has a bit of a reputation for, well, seeking out inappropriate sorts of male company. If she… imposed herself on you in any way, I’ll understand, you were in no position to refuse. Moreover, if you tell me the whole truth about your meetings, well – I have influence here. Maybe I can arrange for you to be treated mercifully. Maybe I can arrange for you to be set free! Go home! Hm? What do you think?”

Aerin lifted up his head and looked at Clement. Through the dull, deep, thudding, hollow ache, he now understood. Up until this moment, he had thought that Clement was furious about the security breach, about the princess in his custody coming into contact with an enemy also in his custody. But now he got it. It was only about Gabrielle.

He twitched until he forced his face into a sort of a smile.

“I… thank you sir but… I told you the truth…”

He couldn’t say if the third blow was the worst. His knees gave in, hanging him sharply by his wrists, and he dry heaved as his stomach gave an impression of falling apart but, honestly, in that very moment he was beyond feeling anything other than helpless disbelief.

“Dodo!” Clement shouted. The guard materialized immediately. He took a look at the shaking Aerin.

“Uh, sir, is the prisoner alright?”

“Yes, he’s fine, just a bit of indigestion. He can’t handle all the fine food that Pelagius keeps sending. Listen, this cell is no good for him. We’re moving him deeper.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll just bring the manacles…”

“No, don’t bother. He’s not running anywhere right now.”

When Dodo freed his wrists, Aerin fell to the floor, clutching his stomach, finally able to fold up. He lay down there and took some unsteady gasps before the guard picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him down the hallway deeper into the dungeon. Beyond a bend of the corridor there was the deepest cell, small and windowless, in almost complete darkness.

“This will do,” Clement said.

Dodo carefully put Aerin on the floor inside and locked the door in the grating.

“Alright. Dodo, I’m sending another soldier to sit with you in the guard room, let’s keep this more secure from now on. As for you,” he looked to the floor, “you sit there and reconsider. I’ll see you again very soon.”

It took a while before Aerin had the strength to sit up. The pain was receding somewhat. He rubbed his abdomen, and carefully flexed his muscles, group by group. His internal organs seemed fine, if sore.

On shaking legs, he walked up to the barely visible bars. Some thirty feet to his right, a tiny bit of daylight was getting in from the corridor when he had previously been held. He sat down, arms wrapped around his stomach, bit down on his knee, and let out a voiceless howl. With more guards, the escape plan was done for. In the world above him, Gabrielle was beyond his reach, and at Clement’s mercy. He’d never see her again. He’d never see anything at all beyond this cell.


	32. Proposition

Gabrielle nervously adjusted her collar, straightened up her dress, and looked out of the window. Clement’s study in the Great Hall offered through its large windows a good view all over the inner courtyard, and she could see that the man was still not coming. She’d now waited for about ten minutes.

Later she’d wonder why it hadn’t occurred to her that as she was sitting here, the majordomo was trying to force information out of Aerin. Perhaps at she was simply, for the last time, underestimating the man.

She tried to get a good, honest idea of what he could have seen. The junipers and the yews were very dense, untrimmed for ages. You could only see the outer courtyard, and be seen from it, from a certain height, unless you were quite close and came from the direction of the gatehouse. Clement had arrived from the opposite side, the inner courtyard. He couldn’t have seen her legs between the bars, she was sure.

But of course he’d noticed the state she’d been in. He could very well think it was her nervousness at being caught talking to the prisoner, however. He knew that she was coming to that garden for Aerin, she was certain of that. And he could just ask Dodo about the first meeting.

So if this is what he wanted to talk about, she’d confess to talking to Aerin. She’d tell him she wanted to find out more about Kontaria. You should know your enemy, shouldn’t you? She shouldn’t have done this without permission, sure. But all in all it’s perfectly understandable. Not a bit reprehensible. All so defensible.

Finally, Clement appeared outside of the window. She tensed up, straight and rigid in the high-back wooden chair. Her knee was burning, and on the fabric of her dress grazing against it she could feel a small spot of cooling blood. She wished she had her underwear on.

He entered the room with an aura of seriousness about him. The room was well fit for this mood – its sparse and only essential furniture was simple and unembellished, walls whitewashed and the beams in them black and the desk which dominated the space covered with scraps of paper and parchment.

He put down a chair opposite of her and stared in silence for a moment. She assumed an expression of curious innocence.

“Gabrielle, you understand that consorting with an enemy is a very serious crime?”

Alright, not beating about the bush then. Better put up a token line of defence, so that he has something to win over.

“I was never consorting with an enemy.”

“Don’t.” He leaned forward and joined the tips of his fingers. “You’ve been talking with him for days.”

“I…”

“Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to go to Lady Paula right now, we’ll launch a formal inquest, and we’re going to draw out of the prisoner all the details of your meetings.”

She didn’t move, but inwardly she recoiled. There goes the plan. If Aerin escapes with outside help, it will now be clear that it was her. And… draw out? She looked straight ahead, and felt coldness at the base of her skull.

Clement tapped his lips with his index fingers. “Or, you could persuade me not to do that.”

Oh. Now she closed her eyes. Yes, obviously. She didn’t know why she was even surprised. She wondered how long had he been waiting to gain this sort of leverage on her.

“Persuade you how?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“Well, tonight after sundown I have to take a short trip out, maybe one or two hours, to supervise a signal fires test – part of my job, you see. If upon my return you’d be kind enough to visit me in my chamber, I’m sure we could spend some quality time together.” He inclined his head. “Of course, if you don’t want to, I understand. I’ll just go right to Lady Paula.”

She stood up with a sigh. “Don’t bother, I’ll see you.” You weaselling piece of shit.

He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll be waiting, then…?”

“Yeah. Until later.” She left the room and closed the door behind her with a decisive clap.

He remained seated in his place. With a little hesitation, he let his hands down and tapped his fingers quickly on his knees. Well, that’s sorted then. Went easier than expected, really. Her reputation was true, she didn’t need much convincing to get into your bed.

He wondered if the boy was actually telling the truth, and they only ever talked about Kontaria. He was inclined to doubt it, but he had no idea what other relations they could have had. Surely, she hadn’t found a way to fuck that guy, too?

Oh well. Sooner or later he’d find out what went on exactly. For now, he had an entirely pleasant night to look forward to. He walked over to the desk and mechanically straightened up a bit of parchment. This wasn’t his proudest moment, but after all, he was working so hard. Wasn’t he too entitled to some fun every once in a while?

* * *

 

As Clement reached his conclusion, Gabrielle reached her chamber. She shood Mista away and leaned against the door. Slowly, gradually, her fingers curled, skin going white under the fingernails where she pressed hard, hard, harder against the wood.

Hypocritical, scheming asswipe! Brown-nosing two-faced son of a bitch! Fucking cunt of a bullshit-slinging opportunistic little cocksucker! Peak Behem!

The pressure resolved with her hand slamming against the door with full force. Palm tingling, she stiffly walked up to her wardrobe and put on a new pair of underwear. She wiped the blood off her knee. She went up to the window and looked outside.

Alright, she thought, mind dull like an oncoming storm, if he wants to play like this, he’ll get what he wants. She’ll go and have sex with him, nice and enthusiastic, leaving him wanting more. She’ll keep it up for a few days, and then bam – the day the ox carts leave, a servant wakes him up saying that Dodo’s stuck in the shitter and that his prisoner is gone.

There was some commotion starting in the outer courtyard, but she paid it no attention.

So then what will you do, Clement? Will you go to Paula and say that I’m the one who did it? And that you think that because you knew that I talked to him all along, it’s just you used it to blackmail me for sex? Nah, with Aerin gone, who will know whose dark secret, Clement? I can scarcely be more condemned for another affair, but you? Paula’s spotless majordomo?

Yeah, Clement. I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you good.

The commotion in the courtyard was growing. Some people were gathering in groups, some running off in different directions.

And suddenly she caught a glimpse of blue, hurrying through the grass. Clement himself, tiny from this distance, ran in among the crowd, and started urgently ordering the servants around.

Huh.

She left the window and went out of the door, travelled the length of the corridor, and started down the stone staircase. Halfway through it, she saw below her two senior servants gliding briskly through the chequered floor of the entrance hall and talking loudly.

“…of course, it’s a very short notice, but we’d been told to expect this, it’s just a question if the cooks can manage on time…”

“Excuse me,” said Gabrielle, leaning on the balustrade, “what is going on?”

The servants turned to her and bowed their heads. The older, a plump man with curly white hair, answered:

“My lady, a messenger has just arrived bearing news. We’re going to have a very distinguished guest in the castle in just a few hours.”

“A distinguished guest? Who’s coming?”

The servant straightened up, adjusted his black livery, half-closed his eyes, threw his chin up, and put his hand flat against his chest. He was evidently delighted to project this air of great formal solemnity. He gave a little cough, took in a little air, and then, satisfied with the build-up, finally replied: “Why, my lady, it's the Lord of Haratraz himself. His Highness, Duke Oren.”


	33. The Peacemaker

Two short horn signals sounded from the gatehouse.

There was a collective adjustment of clothes.

There was a creaking of tightening leather as the soldiers stood to attention in their even row.

There were short whispers from the small crowd of commoners gathered behind it.

There was no reaction from Lady Paula. She stood motionless and looked sternly to the gatehouse, early evening breeze in her long mousy hair. Next to her, Clement cleared his throat. He had spent the last ten minutes thinking if there was anything he might have forgotten, but to his relief he kept finding nothing. He had also spent them not looking at Gabrielle, standing just five feet to his left in a fresh white dress.

As for her, she kept him mostly out of her mind for now. The past three hours she spent in eager anticipation. The Duke coming here – apparently in a great hurry – it could only really mean one thing. She looked down to the tips of her shoes to hide her grin. You did it, Kontaria. You’ve beaten that neckless piece of shit.

Beyond the gate the drawbridge rattled under many hooves and a moment later fifteen or so horsemen streamed into the courtyard, shimmering yellow and orange, the colours of Haratraz. Gabrielle couldn’t discern the duke at first. He came on horseback, like the rest of his entourage. Most men of his rank, and especially his age, would have taken a carriage. She did some quick calculations. Duke Oren, by now, would be over eighty years old.

Then she recognized the round bald head and the sparkling white moustache, which she had seen from afar several times at the royal palace. He rode forward, his banner bearer close behind him. Lady Paula smiled slightly and took a step forward. And Gabrielle realized that her whole posture betrayed something she would have never expected from the lady – a hint of uncertainty, and deference.

Yet it made sense. Paula was the absolute, assured ruler of her corner of the world, and she largely owed that to her relation with the King. She was his old friend, and deep inside him the monarch shared all of her convictions, beliefs and morals. It was said at the court that to Paula was attuned the King’s heart.

Yet Oren was the King’s older friend still. And to Oren was attuned the King’s mind.

Presently the duke got off his horse with smooth ease, handed his equestrian gloves to the banner bearer, and started towards Paula. When he was just a few steps away, he looked at her, opened his arms wide, and smiled the warmest smile to be found in the entire Kingdom.

“My lady dear! It has been too long!”

Paula’s own smile was just a tiny bit sheepish. “My lord! I am delighted to welcome you in Behem.”

They clasped their hands. His voice was just a touch wheezy, loud and buoyant, but its timbre colourless. “I am awfully sorry to inconvenience you on such a short notice. I’m afraid the matters of the state flow fast, and I can’t help but to float with them.”

Paula introduced him to the castle’s bigwigs; and then, also, to Gabrielle.

“I am very glad to finally meet you, Princess,” he said, taking her hand. “I value your father’s friendship very much.” She smiled at him and responded with all the appropriate niceties, while carefully scanning his face. He was short, shorter than she was. His pristine, perfectly white moustache contrasted with his skin, a sun-swept darkened skin, criss-crossed with a thousand hairline wrinkles. She’d like to flatter her judgement by claiming that she noticed some warning signs in his appearance; but despite trying, she saw none. His smile was charming; his posture open and friendly; his large and clear brown eyes looking into hers were full only of genuine kindness, with nothing disturbing to be found lurking beneath. It was only his sinewy, hard grip that vaguely hinted at the stories relied about him, relied quietly; of the mind encased in this warm exterior, a mind hard and deathly cold.

Oren’s train dismounted, and Paula led the duke away to the Great Hall. Gabrielle stalled behind and glanced at the tower with the dungeon. As far as she was aware, Aerin was still undisturbed in his old cell, as if nothing had happened. She would have liked to run and tell him of Oren’s arrival, but there were too many people around.

Then suddenly she had an idea. The servants were all occupied with the feast in the guests’ honour, which was to begin shortly. Paula herself was occupied with Oren. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak into her room and get the drought of wickwort.

* * *

 

Hers was the great dark carved double door in the middle of the first-floor western corridor. Gabrielle paused before it, clutching an empty flask which she collected from her own chamber. The door was easily twice her height. There was nobody in sight.

She exhaled and gave it a push. It opened sleekly, making no sound. Taking one last glance at the corridor, she leapt inside. The door closed behind her with an assured click.

In the slowly dimming evening light the room looked much like she had remembered. There was the table with the plush chairs to her right. There was the great black wardrobe in front of her. There was the great black bed to her left. The tall narrow windows overlooked the inner courtyard.

The still air smelled faintly of Paula; some sort of a lily scent, and old satin. Gabrielle treaded carefully on the polished walnut floor. When she was passing the bed, one of the boards creaked, and she instinctively froze in place. She stood there for a minute, in this eerie ancient space, and listened to the beating of her heart. The sound of a door shutting somewhere far-off woke her up from this stillness. There was work to do.

By the bed, on a cabinet, stood several unmarked glass bottles. Gabrielle’s attention was immediately drawn to the largest. It contained maybe half a pint of a dark, red liquid. She undid the cork and sniffed. It smelled like aniseed.

Flawless victory! She poured half of the draught to her flask and replaced the bottle. With the thing stowed safely in her pocket, she could now go to the feast and—

There were footsteps and voices in the corridor, coming nearer. Oh. Oh motherfucker.

She ducked to look under the bed. It was too low to fit underneath. She rushed to the wardrobe and dived into Paula’s clothes. She closed the door after her just a moment before, through its latticed pane, she saw Paula and Oren enter the chamber.

“…so then they’re pretty happy with it,” the duke finished.

“Naturally,” said Paula. “Please, sit down.”

They took their seats by the table, where Gabrielle could just barely see them from the side. She very cautiously drew her hands stiffly across her abdomen. Her ribs touched both the back wall on her left and the door on her right; she was afraid she could accidentally open the door even with a deeper intake of air.

“So,” Paula said, “what was it that you wanted to tell me?”

The duke leaned forward. It seemed to Gabrielle that he must have been three times less massive than Paula’s mighty triangular bulk.

“I wanted to tell you how the business stands even before the feast. You can probably guess while I’m here. I’m ordering Titulus to withdraw and myself going to Kontaria to settle a peace.”

Paula gave out an exasperated sigh. “Is that really necessary?”

Oren spread out his hands helplessly and with an embarrassed smile. “Believe me, my lady, I wouldn’t be here if I did not believe it to be! We must face the facts. The war in Redona is going poorly, and is threatening to bring great and painful losses. We need everyone we have over there. Meanwhile over here… well. Titulus is an excellent general, don’t let anyone say I claim otherwise, but he’s more reliant on his impetus and reputation than on his long-term organization. I mean to say he either wins his campaigns early and decisively, or not at all. And so far he hasn’t even found a single one of their villages. I judge that his time here is over.”

Now Gabrielle smiled in her hideout. Titulus, when you took risk on that rainy night and exposed your flank to the Kontarians, did you consider that you were also exposing it to a far deadlier enemy? You better hope that the old bastard dies eventually, or he’ll never let you recover from this humiliation.

Paula tapped her fist on her knee. “I must admit that this is very difficult for me to accept. Our prestige will suffer, again.”

“I will make sure to obtain from the Kontarians some ceremonial concessions that will make it look more like a draw.”

“And Titulus hasn’t even found the Kontarian villages… Ha! Did you know he’d actually captured a Kontarian scout and sent him here for safekeeping? He had hoped to interrogate him while resupplying here. If only he kept him close! But I suppose he thought there was time… I guess the scout is useless now.”

Gabrielle held her breath. After a pause, Paula continued.

“We’ll execute him tomorrow, no point wasting food on him. I’ll let one of the wounded soldiers do it, maybe it will restore some sense of justice to them.”

Gabrielle now started breathing shallowly, rapidly.

“Very good, my lady. But let’s not bother ourselves with details right now. As for other important business, Titulus’s army will be passing by here on the way south, and of course organizing their accommodation would be most appreciated.”

“Of course,” Paula said stiffly. “I will provide all that Titulus wants. He’s one of the finest men I know.”

“That he is, that he is. Although after we’re done in Redona I’d advise him to take a break from warfare for a while, try quiet domestic life. It would do him very good. It’s too bad the man is widowed.”

“He’s looking to remarry. I understand he’s taken a liking to Princess Gabrielle and intends to ask her father for his blessing. It could be a good match, perhaps someone would finally tame the girl.”

“It would be an excellent match indeed,” replied Oren, leaning back. Though he was not a man easily fazed, he had to concede that this room was frankly getting on his nerves a bit. All this furniture seemed to loom, to be alive somehow. He could swear he had just heard the wardrobe hiss.

He shook off the feeling and weighted the news quickly. Titulus, of low birth, would obviously see marrying the princess as a step up, and so it would be – their children would have proper noble pedigree. Yet she was only of a cadet branch of the royal family, and was herself already of a dubious reputation. An okay match, not great. Besides, knowing the general’s temperament, perhaps this could lead to some bad blood between him and Count Cyril’s son? Perhaps some unpleasant incident could be instigated? Let’s see. If you’re Cyril’s enemy, you’re also Tessa’s enemy, and if you’re Tessa’s enemy, you’re also the Queen’s. Lots of interesting implications to pore over later, but one thing seemed clear: Titulus was making a mistake. Good.

Lady Paula continued. “I’ve been trying to instil some proper values into that girl, but I’m afraid that only a truly stern hand will teach her to be chaste.”

“Or failing that, at least to be more careful.” He saw Paula’s expression, chuckled apologetically, and rose up. “I am sorry, my lady, my humour is growing uncouth in my old age. If I could take a quick bath now and change my clothes, and then we can finally eat. I must confess that I am famished.”

The noble pair left the room and disappeared from the corridor, which for a moment remained quiet. Then suddenly out of Paula’s chamber bolted out the princess, slammed the door shut behind her, and stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, wild-eyed.

The sky outside was getting dark. The short night was approaching.

With a terrified whimper, the girl turned towards the stairs and started running.


	34. Hold

She ran at full speed through the inner courtyard, past some confused soldiers. Tonight, she thought. She had to get Aerin out tonight. She passed the inner gate. He’ll have to get away on foot. He has very little chance that way, but at least it’s a chance. Clement will know it was her. Okay, well, after he fucks her he’ll be implicated in this too. She’ll figure him out later.

She stopped by the garden’s edge and swung herself around to see if she was being watched; she saw nobody.

She jumped through the junipers and dived for the window. “Aerin!” she whispered. “Aerin, quick!”

There was no response. Her stomached turned.

She looked inside. She could just barely see the cell in the dying light, but it was certain that there was nobody in there.

“What the fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck, fuck, no, no, nonononono…”

She rose up and sprinted through the shrubs, past the corner, to the entrance. She burst into the foreroom.

“Dodo, where’s…”

Dodo wasn’t alone. Beside him at the table sat another soldier, a youngish and rectangular man with thick yellow eyebrows.

“There’s no entry here, my lady,” the soldier said.

She swallowed. “I just…”

“On Clement’s orders, there’s no entry. And he specifically mentioned you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” He laid his hand flat on the table. “My lady,” he added. Dodo looked at her apologetically, but said nothing.

Without another word she turned around and left.

With no aim in mind, she stumbled back into the garden. This was it, then. This was it. She stopped under the old poplar and looked towards the dungeon window, their window, empty and dark. She made a small noise deep in her throat. Maybe she could go to Oren, beg him to change Paula’s mind and set the boy free. But why would Oren do that? What possible reason could he have to do that? They’re gonna kill him tomorrow. And then Titulus will propose to her. And the famous and wealthy general is just the sort of a match her parents are looking for. They’ll marry, and he’ll use her like a good thoroughbred to establish his lineage, suck her dry of her royal blood to pass it onto his children. Oh shit. Oh fucking almighty shit.

She stood all alone, with nothing to support her but her own spine. She suddenly felt like throwing up. The sensation, starting in her stomach, then spread, spread all over, reached her head. There was ringing in her ears. The corners of her vision grew dark.

She gasped, clenched her teeth, and gripped one of the poplar’s gnarled branches. Alright, but maybe don’t faint now. Don’t give in. Hold.

The ringing grew louder and the darkness spread. She gripped the branch harder, to the point of pain, focusing on the sensation, making it tether her to the world. Her skin was damp. Hold. Her head hurt. The bark was coarse and hard. Ringing rising, darkness creeping. Hold. Hold. Hold. Hold. Hold.

She took conscious control over her own breathing. There was nothing in the world but the branch, bright in the surrounding nothingness, brilliant in the pain it caused digging into her skin. The dimming and the noise reached their apex, bore down heavy against her willpower, and finally broke against it, rolled over, started subsiding. The world by degrees returned to her. She was still standing, still holding on to the tree.

She wheezed. She looked around her, and wiped tears off her face. Alright, you stupid shit, think. While you’re free, while he’s alive, for fuck’s sake, think. One thing at a time. Aerin is still in the dungeon somewhere, otherwise the guards wouldn’t be there. Just correct the plan for that asshole sitting there with Dodo.

She couldn’t possibly slip the drought into the food unnoticed in there. But there was one more option. She whipped her head around to look across the courtyard.

The kitchen. If she could find their meals while they were being prepared, she could spike them there. All the cooks were probably occupied with the sudden feast, the place would be a giant mess. If she could find the food meant for the dungeon, three simple bowls sitting somewhere among all the dishes…

But how could she know which one was going to be Aerin’s? He got the same food as the guards, and there was no way to warn him. If he got high off the wickwort, all would be lost.

She’d have to only add the drought to two of the three bowls. One chance in three that he gets the clean one. Only one chance in three he makes it out alive. But at least it was a chance.

Wait. No. Wait. There is a better way.


	35. Crayfish

Johanna was getting started with the crayfish when the front door opened and the princess in white entered. She and her fellow cooks paused, and looked to her.

“Um,” the intruder said, “I just thought I’d like to personally thank you all for stepping up and preparing this feast in such a short time. Must be a real challenge. Please, don’t let me interrupt you, I’ll just stand aside and watch you work for a little while, okay? I’m just amazed.”

Well, isn’t this nice. The kitchen on a whole smiled and nodded and resumed its urgent bustle. Johanna adjusted the linen sleeves over her plump arms and turned to the crustaceans. They were such an awful thing to peel, you had to be very precise, and on top of that they were just glorified pond scum, if anyone wanted to know her opinion…

She suddenly became aware that someone was looming in front of her. She glanced up. It was the princess, standing directly in front of her across the long narrow table and with a strange smile plastered to her face.

“My lady?” Johanna said.

“Sorry, don’t mean to bother you. I’m just curious, will you be serving groats at the feast?” She indicated three bowls standing next to Johanna’s crayfish.

“Oh no, my lady. These are for the dungeons, the guards and the prisoner. I’m afraid we just don’t have time today to make them nice food like Father Pelagius asked, so it’s a groats night for them…”

“Oh, of course,” the girl said. She placed her right hand, over which her white silken sleeve was pulled right up to the fingertips, on the table top. There was an awkward pause. “Oh, sorry, do go on,” she said, glancing at the crayfish. “These seem like they take more work than they’re worth.”

This happened to be one of Johanna’s favourite subjects. “Oh, yes, my lady, to peel them without ruining them is just the worst, let me tell you!” She bent down and cracked the shell of one, picked at the bits, and liberated the meat inside. “Of course, it gets easier with practice.” Another one went down under her skilled fingers. “And they’re so difficult to get, they come from that lake by the forest by the town and they have to make special traps just to catch them. I don’t get what people see in them.” She glanced back up. The girl’s hands were now both tucked in her dress’s pockets, though she quickly took them out and rolled up her sleeves.

“Mhm. I think so too. Say, these groats look awfully sad. They could do with a little garnish at least.” She glanced around, and pounced on some thyme twigs lying around. “This will do,” she said, decorating the bowls with utmost care. “Oh well, I won’t be bothering you anymore. Thank you, bye bye!”

And with that, she hastily left the kitchen.

Johanna shook her head. Garnish for groats. The high-born are so weird.

“Hey, Wala! These groats are soaked through well enough, go get them to the dungeon!”


	36. Spiders

The darkness was total. The silence near complete. The only sensory inputs that reached him were the last of a lingering ache in his stomach and an ever increasing chill, against which he didn’t even have a blanket now. He felt like he was floating, suspended in the black.

He didn’t know how many hours had passed since he had been brought here. From the dying of the distant light he could only gather that it was now night.

Far off and above, a door opened, and there were footsteps. He held his breath and hugged his knees closer to his chest. Clement had said he’d be back soon.

But when dim candlelight entered his corridor, he saw that it was a soldier, one that he hadn’t seen before, with thick yellow eyebrows and a blank expression. The man didn’t even bother to say anything. He put the candle and a bowl of food by the bars, and then walked away.

Aerin exhaled.

Any food he’d eat from now on would only make him stronger to endure more pain. Maybe he should just try to starve himself to death? Would that be any better? He didn’t know.

The candle was just a stub, and it would burn out in a few minutes. He could at least warm himself by the flame. He crawled up to the bars.

The bowl was warm too, though it seemed groats were back on the menu. He grabbed the bowl through the bars and just held it in his hands, soaking up the heat. This bit would have to last him for a long time.

To his surprise, he noticed that the greyish slush was adorned with twigs of thyme. Was it some sort of a joke? He fished them out.

And in the candle’s feeble light, he saw a sprig of a different kind among them. With a jolt he drew it closer to the flame, and stared.

In his hand, the small pale leaves and the single red berry seemed almost black.

He abruptly brought the bowl up to his face and sniffed. It smelled of groats, and also of aniseed.

He sat still for a moment. He put the bowl down. He stared at the candle’s flame. He then buried his face in his hands, and smiled brightly. In the deepest cell of the dungeon, surrounded by chilly nothingness, he thought to himself that the world, when you weigh the good with the bad, is all in all an entirely alright place.

* * *

 

Gabrielle sat several seats away from the top of the table where Paula and Oren presided and she fought to keep up an appearance of calmness, even though she was pretty sure her spine was physically vibrating inside her. The room was full of noise from the conversation and from the minstrels discreetly playing their music, and the duke seemed to be enjoying himself. Damnit, he’s fresh from a long ride and really quite fucking old. Why won’t he fuck off to bed already!

She replied with monosyllables to any efforts from her immediate neighbours, an official of Paula’s and a knight of Oren’s, to talk to her. She kept feverishly analysing the situation.

Have any of the cooks seen her pour the drought in from the flask hidden in her sleeve? She was pretty sure that the one with the crawfish hasn’t, but there were so many of them around! Every time a servant walked into the hall with a new dish she had a start, imagining it to be someone sent from the kitchens to inform Paula of what she’d done.

Have the guards already eaten? Has the wickwort kicked in? How long does it take to kick in, anyway? Did it work at all? What if heat neutralizes it? What if thyme neutralizes it? What if one of the guards wasn’t hungry and skipped the meal? What if Aerin hasn’t noticed the sprig? What if the liquid she took from Paula’s room wasn’t wickwort at all? Maybe it just coincidentally smelled the same? Maybe it was poison?

Oren toasted to Paula. Paula toasted to Titulus. Both toasted to the King. Gabrielle lifted a glass of water to her mouth with a shaking hand. Agonizing minute passed after agonizing minute. Candles burned away sluggishly in the chandeliers high above.

“…such a wonderful occasion…”

“…very glad to see you…”

“…the tide sure to turn…”

“…oh, they’re well pleased…”

“…fine summer we’re having…”

“…airspeed velocity of an unladen…”

“…but most of the court stayed at the capital…”

“…as long as the people are strong, the Kingdom is strong. All the teachers of our Faith teach us so. Don’t they, my child?”

Gabrielle realized that Pelagius was drawing her into some conversation.

“Oh. Yes, Father Pelagius. The Kingdom is strong with the virtues of its subjects. Like resilience and self-sacrifice. And chastity. That one’s very important, isn’t it, Clement?”

The majordomo glared at her, and turned the discussion to a different subject.

Finally, at dead long last, Oren stopped talking and started yawning. Soon enough, everyone rose from the table. Though they kept talking in groups, the feast was over. Gabrielle navigated backwards to the door. She picked a moment when nobody was looking and darted out.

It was by now night time. In the outer courtyard, the only lights she saw were in the kitchen, the gatehouse, and the tiny window in Dodo’s guard room. Otherwise it was very dark, the waxing sickle moon setting already, the outlines of other buildings lurking only indistinctly around her.

Gabrielle rushed to the dungeon tower, stumbling occasionally on invisible bumps in the grass. As she was approaching the door, she slowed down, and as she reached it, she stopped completely. She touched her fingers to the handle. She took a very deep breath, and a second, and a third. She opened the door.

The room was well lit with several candles on the table. Dodo and the soldier were sitting on a bench by the wall to the right of the entrance, and looking at the wall opposite. Gabrielle stopped dead.

Flames were reflected in their eyes, which they did not turn towards her. Every so often, one of them blinked.

Very quietly, Gabrielle closed the door and tiptoed over to them. Only when she was very close, Dodo turned to her, met her eyes, and thought for a moment.

“Your worship!” he whispered. He was talking very slowly and carefully, taking some time to shape the words inside his mouth. “You must be careful. The spiders could see you.”

“The spiders?”

He nodded. “The spiders. Huge as oxen, bright as butterflies.”

The new soldier carefully pointed to the opposite wall. “There is one now. Do you see it? It’s trying to hide, in the purple fire.”

Gabrielle looked around. Shadows cast by the candles’ uneven flames were dancing on the stones.

“Yeah, I can see it,” she said. “You know what, you both better sit here very still. I think they can only see you when you move.”

The soldier wasn’t listening. He was now looking at his hand, which was still pointing to the wall, with utter confusion. She grabbed a torch and some flint.

“You’re doing well,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

The soldier, brow furrowed and mouth open, tapped the back of his hand with the fingers of the other. “Is this mine?” he asked.

“You’re doing very well,” she reassured him, and entered the blackness of the passage to the cells. She lit the torch and called out quietly.

“Aerin?”

* * *

 

Everyone was exchanging their final remarks and wishing everyone else a good night. Clement excused Pelagius for a moment, suddenly taking notice of an absence. He quickly scanned the room.

“Hey!” he said to a senior servant, lurking beside a wall. “Have you seen Princess Gabrielle anywhere?”

The servant nodded. “She’s left the room, sir. Not five minutes ago.”


	37. Seven Steps Around

“Gabrielle!”

She beamed and broke into a run. Past three cells, past a right turn in the passageway, deep in the dark, there he was, shuddering in the cold but unhurt. She dropped the torch on the floor and lunged at him, hugging tight through the bars. He grabbed her by the cheeks and kissed her straight on the mouth; but at once he broke off.

“Gabrielle, has Clement talked to you? He knows about us!”

“He’s talked to me.” She ran her fingers through his hair, frantically. “Listen, that’s not that important now. The war’s over, Oren’s here. Paula will execute you tomorrow. You need to get out now!”

He stood silent for a second, processing all of that. “But what about you? They’ll know…”

“I know how to fix this for myself! Listen, if you get out now and get a head start… fuck! I didn’t take the cell keys from Dodo!”

She turned to leave, but he held her to him.

“They will know it was you! Clement knows!”

“Clement is not a problem. I’m telling you that I can…”

She broke off and froze. She stared at him, wide-eyed. He’d heard it too.

Someone opened the inner door and was now walking downstairs.

Her lower lip trembled, and her hand clenched around his arm. He looked up, and saw torchlight approaching behind the bend. She turned her head. Please be Dodo. Please, please be Dodo.

The footsteps were just around the corner, and now they were joined by a new sound. A tinkling of many keys.

Bearing a torch and a truncheon, along came Clement.

He saw that the cell was still locked. He lowered his truncheon and straightened up. His face bore no expression.

“Step back from the bars, Gabrielle.”

She tried to say something, but only a groan came out.

“I said, step back from the bars.”

She let go of Aerin. The boy let her slip away. He watched them from behind the bars, powerless, helpless.

“Clement,” she said, shakily. “Listen to me. I’ll do everything you ask me to. You can’t…”

“I can do whatever I want! As for you, what an idiotic thing to do! I can’t cover this up, with whatever it is you’ve done to the guards. Keeping your contact with this boy secret has now slipped beyond my power. Our deal is off, we’re going straight to Paula.”

He took several steps forward, but then hesitated. Gabrielle was still by the bars, and he was wary not to get close enough to them for Aerin to reach and grab him. The torch that Gabrielle had dropped was now two steps to his right. Just for a fraction of a second, Gabrielle glanced towards it.

“Okay, you’re right!” she said. “You’re right. It’s all over, you got to tell Paula. But you don’t need to tell her tonight.”

He squinted at her, not following. She summoned all the self-control she had. This was the last chance, the last possible hope. She reached to the lacing below her collar.

“I have a proposition for you. Tomorrow, I will be lost. But tonight, I will be yours.” She undid the fastening, and loosened the strap that was holding her dress together. At the same time, she took a step away from the grating. “Just let me free the boy.” She let her dress open up, revealing her cleavage. Clement’s eyes turned to it.

She succeeded at catching his attention, but that sudden conflict between his dick and his brain couldn’t last long. She only had a few seconds, yet she had to proceed very cautiously. She took another step. She was keeping her distance from him constant, circling him.

“Let him go, and tomorrow I will confess that it was me. I’ll never mention you. And tonight, you’ll have me.” Another step. She bared her shoulder, and the fabric parted further, revealing more naked skin between her breasts, even down to her stomach. Clement was still staring, but she ran out of things to say. He could snap out of her spell at any second. Yet another step. She was getting close to the torch now, and it threw more golden light on her, and gradually deepened the shadows: in the pit of her neck, in the vulnerable dimples under her collarbones, on both sides of her sternum, where her breasts gently rose and softly moved with her every motion.

At this moment, Aerin understood what she was doing. Silently, he sidestepped to a spot such that he, Clement and the torch were in one line, and braced himself. Gabrielle saw this out of the corner of her eye, and fought down a smile. Yes! Yes, exactly, my clever boy!

She pressed at her breast with her fingers; Clement watched her soft flesh yield under her touch in the half light. Step. She brushed her hair away to her back, strands falling in line with smooth, wavy flow. Step. She let the dress dangle lightly from her other shoulder, its material just barely holding onto the curve of her frame, hanging in delicate balance, boding to fall off at a tiniest instigation and unveil her, reveal her beauty. Step. She was right beside the torch. Clement was two steps away from her. Aerin was exactly behind his back.

She modestly lowered her eyes and smiled. Clement inhaled and started to say something. Gabrielle kicked the torch at his face.

Now humans, like all animals, come with a certain set of pre-programmed instinctive responses to external inputs. One fine example of those is to urgently swat away at anything that approaches your face at high speed; and to do it double-urgently if said thing is on fire.

Thus Clement’s brain stem now took control over his body, and in first order of business undertook to decide which of his hands should do the swatting; and, to its terrible consternation, found them both occupied, the right with a truncheon, the left with a torch (of all things!), neither item a safe object to bring up to the face at high speed; and unable to cope with this complex problem, sent it up to the upper brain to solve, as precious time ran on and the offending flare kept approaching at an alarming speed.

Whenever your nerves rush to consult your brain on an affair requiring immediate attention, it’s always really helpful if they find it alert, and not distracted; and especially not heavily distracted by something deeply engrossing, such as, to give a completely random example, a pretty girl sensuously taking off her clothes.

So it must have been a solid tenth of a second after Gabrielle’s kick, the torch having already travelled more than half the distance, sending out sparks and pirouetting gracefully, that Clement finally settled for a course of action. With so little time left, the only course available to him was rather mediocre.

He closed his eyes, turned his face away and raised both hands in front of him. This allowed him to parry the torch with the truncheon. His brain stem congratulated him on this good work. The immediate danger was successfully mitigated, at the small price of getting himself completely off balance, his body weight shifting upwards on an uncontrolled trajectory which the cerebellum was now scurrying off to calculate. Well, there was also the small issue that his eyes were now closed and his face turned away. Which meant that he didn’t see Gabrielle lunge.

Aerin watched them tangle and Clement fall to his back with Gabrielle on top of him. A moment before impact, Clement let go of his torch and instinctively outstretched his left hand to break the fall. Crashing into the bars, Aerin reached out and caught it; then put his feet on the grating and pulled, with all the power in his legs, dragging Clement’s whole arm, up to the shoulder, into the cell, where he twisted it almost to its breaking point.

Clement screamed. Aerin wrapped his knee around his throat. Gabrielle grabbed his other hand with both of hers and wrestled the truncheon away, fell off, hit the floor with her cheek, rolled over, and went to her knees, looking on, bewildered. Clement was kicking out and trying to make a grab at Aerin with his free hand, but it was clear he could do nothing; his prisoner had him completely pinned down.

Aerin shouted out at her. “Key and manacles, quick!”

She got up to her feet and ran, refastening her dress on the way. She sprinted into the guard room and snatched the ring with the cell keys, along with a pair of heavy manacles.

“S’alright, guys?” she asked breathlessly.

“S’alright,” the guards agreed. They continued watching the wall with unwavering fascination.

Back at the cell, they clasped the fetters over both Clement’s wrists and the bars, bundling them together and making him completely unable to move his hands. When Aerin let go of his throat, he started screaming again; only when silenced with a gag made of his own torn sleeve he acknowledged his defeat and slackened, glaring furiously.

Aerin leaned his hands on the bars, breathing heavily. Gabrielle got up, unsteady, from Clement’s side and looked at the cell keys. Trying them at random, she eventually got the right one. With a loud clang that echoed all over the corridor, the lock opened.

Aerin didn’t move at first. Only after some seconds of hesitation he walked over to the door and gave it a push. It opened obediently before him. He took a deep breath and stepped outside.

She swelled up. He would now be chased and hunted, but he had his fighting chance back. Right now, right at this moment, he was free.

He looked at her and grinned. She threw her chin up.

“Hi,” she said. This was the first time they were ever together without any bars, chains, or restraints.

“Hi,” he replied. He blinked and took a good look at her. “You’ve torn your dress.”

She patted a small tear on her sleeve. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Your face is a mess.”

She brushed off her hair and wiped the dirt off her cheek. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. Other than Clement, nobody suspects anything about us!”

“How could they know?”

She paused. He looked like he was about to add something, but didn’t. Instead he took her in his arms and kissed her, and put his hand on her head and ran it down her neck, her back, back up, back down. Finally, if just for once, he got to hold her whole.

But this was not the place, and not the time. On the floor beside them, the restrained majordomo kept glaring.

“Well, he knows everything now,” Aerin said.

Gabrielle hesitated. “What are we going to do?” she asked, although she knew they only had one option.

Aerin stepped over Clement’s legs and picked up the truncheon. He tapped it against the wall. It made a dry harsh clack, and carried vibrations stiffly to his hand. It was very hard, very solid wood.

“If they catch me, they can’t kill me any harder for one extra murder,” he said. Gabrielle clenched her fists nervously, and said nothing. You shouldn’t have snooped around so hard, Clement. Now it’s you or me.

Aerin was now standing over Clement. The majordomo fixed his stare on him, unflinching, stone cold, though all blood flowed away from his face. Aerin gripped the truncheon harder. He tried to work up the exact logistics of a killing blow. From up down, or from back to front? Would his skull crack open like an egg, splashing brains all over the place? What if he got it wrong, and had to do repeated blows? How many would it take? How do you know for sure someone’s dead?

Clement was still looking at him, and his breathing was faster and faster.

“Are… are you doing this?” asked Gabrielle. Aerin twiddled the truncheon nervously.

“I’m about to.”

“Look, it’s worse for him if you prolong this.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you want to do this?”

“Me? I’d never… what sort of a warrior are you going to be if you don’t want to kill?”

“I dunno, a defensive one! How are you going to deal with court politics if you don’t?”

He braced himself. Alright, asshole. It’s you or Gabrielle. But to her, suddenly, all was clear. How is she going to deal with court politics indeed?

“Aerin, let him be and just take me with you.”

He lowered the truncheon and stared at her.

“I found out today that Titulus wants to marry me. I don’t think I’d handle this all that well. Besides, I’m starting to think I don’t really fit in Harmen after all.”

He had in one second a thousand vague visions of taking her home, of all the things they’d do together, of days in the sun. Then, also, he thought of the practicalities.

He looked down at Clement.

“Let’s go talk this over somewhere more private,” he said. “Hey, guy, looks like it’s your lucky day after all!”

He threw away the truncheon, which bounced several times on the floor to hollow echoes. Then he smiled, leaned down, and with full force punched Clement in the stomach.

The majordomo curled to the side, groaned, and called Aerin something that was very difficult to understand because of the gag. But it might have been “otter chucker”.


	38. But What Are We Going to Do

They blew out all candles but one, which made the room dimmer and drew some complaints from the two men on the lookout for giant spiders, but also meant less visibility from outside.

“Hey,” Dodo said with effort, turning his head to Aerin. “Aren’t you the prisoner?”

“What? No. As you can see, I’m not imprisoned. So I can’t be the prisoner.”

“Oh. Right.”

Aerin looked at Gabrielle, sitting tense on the bench right beside him. He recalled all he could of the road between Behem and the border, which he had seen like a nightmarish vision when hauled over here in binds. It ran through open farmland, with many villages by it, with many people, many eyes, many dogs. He rubbed his forehead. Crossing that land alone on foot would take him several days, and the chances of detection were huge.

What if they kept well off the road? If there was woodland, he would know how to live off it. But such a passage could take weeks. And surely Paula would have the locals, who actually knew the land, look for them. This option was then even worse.

He frankly didn’t see much of a chance of making it. He should off Clement, persuade Gabrielle to stay, and go off by himself – a suicidal escape was still better than outright execution. But here she was, gorgeous and determined. If she stayed, she was condemned to a miserable life. And if somehow, someway, they succeeded…

“You know Kontaria is not really a princess kind of place, right? I mean, your life would be very different…”

“Aerin, do we really need to have this talk?”

“But… you’d leave behind your family, your friends…”

“Titulus would be my family now. My previous life is as good as over. I’ve been kidding myself that I could ever be me in Harmen. It’s only people like Oren that live here on their own terms. I’m not like him, I… I have too much of an eye for detail I guess.”

“Detail? What?”

“Oh, just a thing he said today. Doesn’t matter. Look, don’t worry about the people I leave behind. I’ll fucking write. Trust me, I know what I want.”

He smiled. “Alright, listen. Our only chance, I think, is to steal horses from the castle stables. Two for each of us. That way we can keep changing them, and that will get us to the border by tomorrow afternoon. A pursuit would get fresh ones from the villages, but with a whole night’s head start we’d just about make it.”

“We can take horses from the stables easily enough, but we’ll never get them through the gate. There are always two guards on top of the gatehouse and two on the ground within the passage itself.”

“Is the gate locked at night?”

“It’s closed, but not barred.”

“So we two can open it?”

“Just one man can open it with a hard push.”

“Okay, so if we can only get those guards away there for like two minutes, then maybe… let me take a look!”

They peeked out of the door. The gatehouse was illuminated with torchlight some ten dozen steps away from them. The stables she knew to be by the wall opposite from them, but they could not be seen in the darkness. There was barely enough starlight to outline Behem’s walls against the sky. Gabrielle could just make out the cone-roofed turret over the stables, some three hundred steps away…

Wait.

“Aerin! There’s a shitload of fireworks in that tower!”

“What?”

“They’re leftover from the festival… If we blew that up, the guards would surely at least turn that way for a minute…”

Aerin squinted. The turret was only an area of blackness blacker than the surrounding sky. A fireworks display may just work, but it would also wake up the entire castle. This was a shit plan that could very easily backfire. But there was no time. They had to wing it.

“Okay. Suppose we can launch them with some delay…”

“I saw extra fuse.”

“Okay, good. So we take four horses from the stable, stuff their ears with something, fashion something to block their vision, wrap their hooves with cloth… we lead them here on this side of the gatehouse before the show starts, and the moment it starts exploding, we go for it. Might work.”

Gabrielle played this out in her head. “The whole castle will wake up and come down here to watch. They’ll notice I’m not here. My servant Mista, who’s probably wondering where I am right now… and Paula and the others will be coming here from the Great Hall, and she will immediately get suspicious if she doesn’t see me with that crowd… I need to be in the Great Hall when the fireworks go off.”

Aerin swore. “Then only I can get the horses through. But I can only get two. I need to be holding both by the head, or they’ll start looking around, see the fireworks and get spooked. We won’t make it before the chase with no spare horses.”

They closed the door and sat back at the table, frustrated. Priceless minutes were escaping. Aerin closed his eyes. Maybe, if they rode the horses to near exhaustion, they’d at least make it far enough to go the rest of the way on foot? He visualised the maps of this part of Harmen which he saw back at the village…

“Fuck,” he said, suddenly getting up, “wait, there’s a way. If we don’t go east straight for Kontaria but north, the wilderness soon starts. We would reach the Blue Cliffs, keep going north along them, and make it to the City of Ys. From there, it’s just a short ride south to Kontaria. If they pursued us there, it would be easier to hide…”

She frowned. She knew nothing about the geography of this province, having been confined to the castle. “You think it’s a good plan?”

“No. We could beat them, but it will be close.”

“Even if they chase us down, we could at least be free together, just for one day.”

He looked at her. That girl. “Okay, let’s fucking do this. We’ll need to break into the stable, the turret, and get some food from the larder… are there guards around?”

“Not inside the castle, not with everyone gone with Titulus. There’s just locks.”

“How do we get inside those places then?”

They looked at each other. “Clement’s keys,” they said together. The course of action seemed clear.

“I take the horses and the food,” Aerin said, “you set up the fireworks. We’ll tie a rope to the walls somewhere where they are low. You light the fireworks and run for the Great Hall. When they start exploding, I get the horses through the gate, and you come here to act surprised. As soon as they stop paying attention to you, you run for the rope, get out, and meet me. By dawn we’re a long way away.” A long way away. Free. Her eyes glittered in candle light. “First, get me some clothes and a map, okay? And I’ll take these guys somewhere inconspicuous.”


	39. On Another Dark Night

The chapel was very quiet. The lights in the nave turned infirmary had all gone out. It was probably near midnight now.

One major advantage of stone floors is that they don’t creak. She glid towards the young bald soldier’s bedside like a ghost.

She heard him breathe evenly, just like the rest. Her eyes were adjusted to the darkness enough to discern his belongings by his bed: his short spear, his armour and his clothes. They had been washed and stowed here, but he hadn’t had any use for them, staying in this room and on the bed all the time. She was sure he would mind if he knew that she was borrowing them for Aerin. Good.

She took the clothes. The leather armour she left behind. This was a flight, not a fight.

The clothes bundled under her arm, she retreated from the room. Though the door creaked like a million screaming demons, nobody stirred.

She knew this place so well she navigated in the dark with ease. Some way down the narrow corridor behind a door to the left was the scriptorium, where the chapel’s books and papers were kept. She closed the door after her. She would have to light a candle here to find the right map. She listened intently for any noises, but only heard faint snoring from the chambers on the floor above – Pelagius, probably. Okay, quick. There is no time.

She lit the candle and found a shelf on which treatises on geography could be found. She started looking through folded pieces of parchment which could credibly be maps.

She hoped Aerin knew what he was doing. She could only trust him – in the end, though she was Harmeni and he Kontarian, he grew up close from here while she was from far away. He said that their best chance was to make it through the wilderness to the north. It sounded risky, but what didn’t?

Suddenly, her movements faltered. For him, the least risky thing would be to pass the gate with two horses, leave her here and just dash east for the nearest border.

Well that’s a good time to revisit her doubts! She’d been afraid to let him touch her too, and look how that turned out. He wouldn’t leave her here. He had feelings for her, she knew that. And he owed her, a whole lot.

Yet as she was leafing through the papers, the thought refused to keep quiet. He has feelings for you, but he has feelings for being free, too. His chances are a lot better if he’s alone, and with two horses. Besides, for real, you still don’t actually know him. You wanted to help him, but why? Because he’s hot, and because you pitied him. Fair enough, as long as the plan was to ship him away in an ox cart and go on with your life. Now you’re no longer just doing him a favour. Now you’re asking for a favour back, you’re asking him to lower his own chances of survival so you can tag along. Now you’re going to wager your life on him, and not on his pretty eyes or on his hard cock, but on who he is. You don’t know who he is! He seemed alright when you talked to him, but damnit, everyone would seem alright in a dungeon! Even Clement seemed human and relatable with that truncheon hovering over his skull!

She found the map she had been looking for. It was a fairly detailed representation of the land between Behem, the City of Ys, and the Kontarian border.

She stood motionless for a moment. Then she blew out the candle and left the room. She wanted to think, but there was no time.

* * *

 

“Yes, I’m telling you, this room is very spider-proof.”

Clement looked incredulous when Aerin led the two docile men into his erstwhile cell and locked the door behind them. He then disappeared for several minutes, and returned with a bunch of blankets.

“Take these, it gets chilly here,” he said, pushing them through the bars. “Well, goodbye then, Dodo. You are pretty alright, I guess. Sorry about tomorrow.”

Dodo looked at him benignantly and smiled. Aerin looked down at Clement.

“Totally not sorry about you, though. Hope your ass freezes off by morning, dickhole.”

With these heartfelt goodbyes, he took away his lamp and left them in the dark.

Heading back to the foreroom, he passed by his original cell. He paused, put the candle on the floor, and entered it.

He knew every inch of it so well. He traced the shapes of the floor stones with his toes. He patted the fetters hanging from the ceiling. He put his foot in the familiar crack and lifted himself up to the window where he and Gabrielle had spent so much time. He walked over to the bars where she had chained him and taken him. He positioned himself exactly as he had stood then, and relived the memory for a moment. He smiled to himself.

He walked over to the door. It answered to his push and opened before him. He’d never take this for granted again, he thought to himself. This is like having a divine power.

He turned around, and gave the place one final look.

“Bye, cell,” he murmured, and returned upstairs.

* * *

 

She watched him thoughtfully as he took off his prison rags and started putting on the clothes she brought.

“Are you ogling?” he asked.

“Mhm.” No matter what second thoughts she was having, the sight of his naked body could always cheer her up.

He wrapped his belt over the dark hooded vest. In the wooden chest by the wall they found a good length of thick hempen rope. It was time to get going.

* * *

 

Grass yielded softly under his feet. He lifted up his head. Above, the vast and distant and eternal sky glittered brilliant with a million stars. He grinned in the dark like a moron.

They went up the wall over the chapel garden. There would be a guard making rounds, but she knew there was only one – most were only looking out over the walls of the inner courtyard, inside which anyone important stayed. Where they now stood, the wall was only about twelve feet high, and below it a steep and shrub-covered slope descended into the dark.

Aerin tied the rope around a crenellation. It reached all the way down and was almost invisible in this night, the same shade as the rock.

“You’ll be fine?” he whispered. She nodded.

She left him with the largest keys, which should match the heavy locks of the stable and the larder. They went back down to the dungeon door, where after a bit of trial and error she unlocked the entrance to the armoury.

“I’m off to the fireworks. Meet you here in half an hour.”

“Be careful, Gabrielle.” He grabbed her and kissed her. “For luck,” he said.

She smiled. In the darkness of her eyes there was something distant, searching.


	40. Heart of Hearts

In the armoury, he picked a decent pair of boots for himself, a pair of knives, and a hatchet. Back in the courtyard, he circled away from the gatehouse to where the stable was. He found it by the smell. There was nobody about, and all the windows were now dark. Up on the gatehouse, in the torchlight, he saw two guards stand motionless.

The stable door opened without much fuss. He now had to select a good pair of horses in near total darkness.

He liked the ones with the orange and yellow caparisons stowed in their stalls – the ones that Oren’s troop arrived on. But, alas, these were very tired.

He ended up picking two of the local horses that appeared both sturdy and reacted to him with calmness. He led them out of the stalls and saddled them. Then he took the saddlebags and, quietly, went outside and ran for the larder.

The kennels were nearby and some dog sensed him, and started barking. Aerin cringed and held his breath in his sinuses, trying to will the stupid bastard quiet.

He could only rely on Gabrielle’s directions in the dark, and wasn’t sure he was breaking into the correct building until after he managed to open the door. It was, indeed, the larder. He groped for viable food. Into the saddlebags he threw some loaves of bread, apples, and pieces of dry meat. He also found two waterskins. Locking the door behind him, he returned to the stable, cursing the dog which was still insisting on making noise, and loaded the supplies onto his horses.

Now he rummaged about for materials for the final part of his preparations. He sliced up one of the fine heraldic caparisons and wrapped the strips of material about the horses’ hooves. He carved out bits of hard leather from a saddle he’d found and tied them to the sides of their heads, so that they could not see anything around them and only the little bit of space directly ahead. He finally tore lumps of wool from an old vest hanging by the door and stuffed it in their ears. If the animals were beginning to question his sanity through all of this, they were tactful enough not to display it; they merely shook their heads and twitched their ears in mild annoyance.

* * *

 

The round room had two large windows, one facing towards the inner courtyard and one facing the world beyond the walls. The fireworks were stacked all over the shelves by the wall. There was an awful lot of them.

There were also many yards of spare fuse. She cut off several inches, lit it with her flint, and tried to guess how much delay she would get for every inch. To her satisfaction, it turned out the fuse was high quality, burning evenly and predictably.

She arranged the fireworks so that most of them were facing the window to the outside – this way they would explode some distance from the castle and not give too much light to the courtyard, where Aerin would be waiting. She gave them different lengths of fuse, to prolong the whole thing and give him more time. Some would be exploding in the room, causing a lot of noise and maybe even a fire.

She thought that the shortest of the fuses she prepared would take about twenty minutes to burn through – enough time for her to return to her chamber in the Great Hall.

She looked at her finished job with apprehension. The fuses were whirling black on the floor like a mass of snakes. The fireworks would surely attract the guards’ attention for a while. Whether they could divide their attention, and whether the while would be long enough, she couldn’t know. But this was all she could do to give Aerin a chance. All he needed was maybe two minutes to get through that gate.

And should he succeed, what would he do then?

* * *

 

One of the guards on top of the gatehouse stretched out his hands and yawned.

“What’s that dog yapping about?” his companion said, addressing the question more to the universe on a whole than in his particular direction.

“Iunno, man. Dogs are stupid.” He walked over to the inner side of the wall. Beyond the circle of torchlight, the outer courtyard was utterly black below him. Only a handful of windows yet lit up over at the Great Hall and the torches at the inner courtyard walls testified that there was still a castle around him. “Shut the fuck up, dog,” he said.

Night shifts at the gatehouse were the worst. They were more ceremonial than practical, too. They had all those border forts and signal fires that would give them an advance warning if any raiding party was approaching, there had been no reports of active bands of thieves recently – and certainly not ones stupid enough to attack a fucking castle – and this was the most boring province in the world, even with a war raging just outside of it.

He contemplated the night-drowned courtyard for a while still. His mind kept imagining shapes in the mass of shadows. A vague unease crept over him. He felt like he was guarding darkness against darkness.

* * *

 

Slowly, carefully, Aerin led the horses towards the dungeon tower. He’d judged their characters well – they were calm and obedient. One was brown, the other black – good night-time escape colours.

He stopped by the tower and waited. Soon enough, a brighter shape appeared in the dark of the courtyard and resolved itself into Gabrielle’s white dress. Decidedly not a good night-time escape colour. The girl walked up to him and smiled stiffly.

“We’re ready.” Her heart was pounding like mad. Her fingers felt cold even in the warm night.

He exhaled. He looked towards the gatehouse. A minute to walk over there. Then he’d need to open the gate, let the horses out, and close it again behind him to remain unnoticed. Then it was just the drawbridge between him and freedom.

He looked to the stars. They were blazing white, but did little to illuminate the world below. The moon had set.

“So you’ll wait in the woods under the castle,” she said.

“Yeah. Below where the rope is.” He was tense with apprehension now. How did he end up here? Were they really going to pull this off? So many things could go wrong.

“Aerin.”

He kept visualizing his progress through the gate. He’d have to pass right by the guards. Hopefully the fireworks will be really loud.

“Aerin, promise me you won’t leave me here.”

He blinked and looked at her. “What?”

“Your chances are a ton better if you just leave alone with both horses, and we both know that. So please, please don’t leave me.”

He took a moment to work through this. Well, shit. So you think I can leave you to live here? He grabbed her by both cheeks. Her body was trembling, just a little.

“What kind of a person do you think I am?” he asked, in a tone he hoped was reassuring. She just exhaled unevenly. “Hey. You’ve done a lot for me. I want to give back… besides, I’m not done with you, remember?”

“Not done…?”

“Clement interrupted us just as you were going to come, right? I’m still gonna give you that orgasm.”

She laughed quietly. He gave her a good long kiss, and a good long hug. “I’ll see you on the other side of the wall. I promise. We’re gonna get right out of here.”

She leaned on his chest and patted him on the shoulders. Alex would give her similar reassuring kisses, she remembered.

Ah well. It was too late now. She’d given the boy back his freedom. She could not control what he did. She could only trust. She pulled back from him and looked him in the eyes.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side of the wall.”

* * *

 

Pelagius’s snoring was unbearable, even from the adjacent chamber. Valdemar kicked off his bed linens and got up. Looks like another night with little sleep and lots of grim thoughts.

With a groan he walked over to his open window. He rubbed his eyes. The cicadas were warbling away in the garden below. In front of him, the massive tower with the armoury and the dungeons was pale in faint starshine, its limestone lighter than the granite of the rest of the castle.

His eyes wandered around for a short while and then suddenly, at the base of the tower, stopped. Some shapes were outlined against the dim rock. He gripped the windowsill.

There were two saddled horses standing there. Next to them, a figure in white, which he immediately recognized as Princess Gabrielle, and talking to her – someone he couldn’t recognize, not in all this darkness. A lean, tall boy. He’d seen him before. Where?

Suddenly he realized. The Kontarian prisoner! Valdemar opened his eyes wide. The couple kissed, and embraced. Valdemar looked from them to the saddled horses. They were about to elope! They were going to get those horses through the gate somehow and run away!

He looked to the gatehouse. He breathed in, ready to shout out a warning to the guards.

That awful girl! Falling for the first boy that comes her way again, and plotting an escape like that! What debauchery! What outrage! What a disgrace!

The gatehouse was fortified, the passage narrow, the guards armed. Were those two truly going to attempt to get through it?

Well. What daring. What guts! She’s going to abandon her whole life, he’s going to face off all these guards somehow, in some reckless and desperate attempt! What courage! Just like in the old days.

He clicked his teeth together. He shifted from foot to foot. A multitude of disjointed impressions, associations and notions, deep private memories that fed his heart of hearts, rose up and swarmed in a sudden conflict. He glanced from the pair to the gatehouse, from the gatehouse to the pair.

Gabrielle let go of the boy and started walking through the courtyard.

Cicadas sang. Pelagius snored.

Valdemar raised his hand, his fingers outstretched.

“The gods keep you and guide you, you mad idiots,” he whispered. Then he turned from the window and went back to bed.


	41. A Hundred Steps Forward

Let there be a light show.

The lit fuses hissed. It smelled of sulphur. Gabrielle locked the door and hastily went down.

Back in the courtyard she looked to where Aerin would be standing, but she couldn’t see him now. Praise the moonless night.

She walked past the gate to the inner courtyard, where the torchlight was. Some servants were still scurrying around on the ground floor of the Great Hall. She climbed up the great staircase and found herself in her dim corridor. She went up to her chamber and entered it for the last time.

She opened the window and looked out. She could see the top of the outer gatehouse, but the view of the gate itself was obstructed by the roof of the chapel. She saw no movement from the guards. It would still take several minutes for the first fireworks to go off.

She could not bear it. She turned around and sat stiffly on her bed, staring at the wall. Her fists were clenched at her sides.

* * *

 

He thought that he saw her walk off, a pale shadow in the dark. He stepped from foot to foot. His knees felt weak. The gatehouse was far away, but he didn't dare get nearer to its lights. The whole plan seemed ridiculous now. Maybe he should just dump the horses right now and run for the rope. He couldn't remember why had he been so opposed to escaping on foot.

* * *

 

She breathed in. She breathed out. It should have started by now. Why wasn't it starting?

* * *

 

The black horse snorted quietly. He patted it lightly on the soft skin of the nose. Easy, boy. Easy. Easy.

* * *

 

Nothing was happening. Nothing kept happening. She was now convinced nothing would ever happen and she'd sit here staring in the dark until the end of time. That's why in the first moments she thought she was only imagining it; the hiss; the whistling whine; the bang; her shadow, huge on the wall, beset in shocking red light.

She suddenly felt very cold.

* * *

 

For an instant, all of Behem was illuminated. Then the light within died, but smoke and sound kept rising from the turret, and more and more explosions were flashing away from the castle like many-coloured lightning, outlining the walls.

Out of the gatehouse, two guards ran into the inner courtyard and stared at the turret.

His feet were not his feet when he stepped forward. His body was not his body. He felt like he was just a passenger, a watcher from far away. He felt himself move towards the gate more than he actually did the moving.

It was a hundred steps away. The guards were right by it, with his backs to him. They were pointing.

It was sixty steps away. The barrage kept coming. He could now smell in the air the residue of burnt sulphur. The horses twitched their ears. He could hear the guards' voices.

It was thirty steps away. A particularly large white firework exploded, again illuminating the courtyard. It didn't matter anymore. He was close to the gatehouse's torches now, and exposed in their light to all the world.

It was ten steps away. "It can sometimes explode on its own when it's hot," one guard said. "Can it though?" remarked the other, turning his head so that Aerin could see part of his nose and one eyebrow and the glitter of the corner of his eye. The boy bit his lip and looked on the ground, in some ridiculous deep-held belief that he couldn’t be seen if he couldn’t see. The horses were huge and loud like dragons of the sagas. The thundering noise continued from the turret. He was at the gatehouse. The nearer guard was seven or eight feet away.

He entered the shadow of the stone passage and walked under the lifted porticulus and ahead he saw the unbarred gate. He turned around and leaned on it with his back and pushed from his legs, and after several strained moments the several hundred pounds of oak wood moved with a great groan on the iron hinges and so breathless he ushered the horses out, black one, brown one, and then he himself left the castle, let go of the animals for a moment, and pushed the gate closed again. Now there was a solid barrier between him and the men on the ground, but the ones up on top could still see the bridge plain, should they only glance away from the lights. Beyond the bridge, the ancient trees grew. If he could reach their shadow, he would be free.

He grabbed at the harnesses and walked on. Though the hooves were wrapped in cloth, the wooden bridge was like a giant war drum, and every step a great resounding hollow bang. He didn’t turn to look what the guards above were doing. He didn't want to know. He held onto his tunnel vision, the ever nearing darkness.

Behind him, the whistling and the cracking continued, and faint flashes of colourful light were reflected in the treetops.

His foot hit solid ground.

He walked until the shadow of a great tree swallowed him. Only then did he turn around.

There were the two guards on top of the gatehouse, bent over the inner side of the wall, talking with the ones which he had passed just a minute ago. He now heard shouts from within the castle. The gate stood just as he had left it. He stared, expecting some sort of an alarm to sound, or for the gate to open and the guards burst out pursuing him. But Behem was oblivious to him. He stood in the dark, hands full of horses, unseen, unheeded, and as free as he had been that moment when he started creeping for the Eagle of Titulus.

“No way,” he whispered to the horses. “No fucking way.”


	42. Trust Fall

The chambers in Gabrielle’s hallway had been given to Oren’s knights, and as the first firecrackers sounded she heard the doors and windows open and an animated talk break out. A minute or so afterwards, Mista knocked and entered.

“My lady, there’s a fire in the tower over the stables!”

Gabrielle stood up. “Let’s go see,” she said flatly, and passed the girl servant in the doorway.

She walked downstairs mechanically, among a growing crowd of both locals and guests throwing coats over their night gowns and all heading to get a closer look. She was in a dreamlike, detached confusion. Aerin would have started moving the moment the first fireworks appeared. By now, he’s either escaped or got caught. He’s either won everything, or they both lost everything. She walked among the curious people and did not know in which of her possible realities she was.

As she was passing the inner gate, she braced herself. Immediately as she entered the outer courtyard she looked to the gatehouse.

The guards were there, and they were looking towards the fireworks. A flash threw brief light all over the courtyard. There was nobody under the dungeon tower. She kept a straight face, even though all her insides leapt. He fucking did it. He actually got the horses out. Shit. Holy shit.

She looked to the place on the wall over the garden where she knew the rope was, her own way out. “Wait for me,” she whispered.

The crowd stopped near the gatehouse. The clamour was unbelievable. The fireworks whistled and cracked, in the stables the horses screamed, in the kennels the dogs whined. The people all talked one over another. Some brought torches, and in their light Gabrielle saw their faces, some worried, some amused, some just puzzled.

Then the people stopped talking and turned in one direction. Covering herself in a great dark blanket, with Oren following her close, among the crowd went Lady Paula.

* * *

 

He made a quarter of a circle around the castle, along a wide path under the trees, until he found the place. To his left, above the treeline the escarpment sloped, and from it rose the walls of Behem. The rope was there somewhere, though he couldn’t see it.

The fireworks seemed to be dying off. He plucked the wool out of the horses’ ears and relieved them of the blinkers; he took the cloth off their hooves and waited. She should appear soon.

But what if she didn’t show up? Every minute counted now. Every mile he made before they discovered his escape could mean a difference between life and death.

How long would he wait? An hour? Two?

And if she still didn’t show up, a voice inside him asked, would you tie the horses here and get back in there? Climb that rope and try to find out what happened? She came for you today, she found you in the dark.

It would be completely useless to try to come back. He didn’t know the castle at all. He wouldn’t even find her. He’d just get himself killed.

He answered himself. Of course he’d still do it. He was, after all, a stupid idiot.

He licked his lips. Come on, girl. You’ve got this. Come on.

* * *

 

“What is happening?!” Paula demanded. There was a general indecisiveness on who should answer.

“The fireworks, my lady…” a soldier started, eventually.

“I can see it’s the fireworks, idiot! How did they catch fire?!”

Nobody could answer that. Beside Paula, Oren was watching the display with calm curiosity. Gabrielle suspected that Paula was upset not because of the risk of fire spreading – there was almost none – but because she couldn’t bear the thought that Oren could find her little empire imperfect, accident-prone, bizarre.

The Lady then ran her gaze around the crowd. “Where’s Clement?!” she demanded.

Gabrielle’s heart skipped a beat.

Fuck planning in haste! You get all the details nice and tidy and then you forget the most glaringly obvious thing in the world! Of course Paula would look for Clement first thing anything happened! How could they possibly not have thought of that?!

What the fuck now? They’d start looking and someone would bungle into the dungeons and there went the entire crucial fucking head start!

“Clement!” Paula shouted. Suddenly, Gabrielle remembered.

“Wasn’t he supposed to go out and test signal fires or something?” she said. Paula looked at her, fireworks glinting in her eyeballs, lower teeth bared, looking like a predatory fish. Gabrielle endured the look, stone faced.

Then Paula turned away. “Damned signal fires! Out of all possible nights! Someone grab water buckets already and go extinguish this!”

And this, Gabrielle decided, was the moment to go.

“Mista,” she said, turning to her servant, “I won’t be able to sleep now. I’m just gonna go up a tower, watch the stars for a while. Don’t wait for me.”

“Alright, my lady. I will see you tomorrow.”

“Yes. Until tomorrow.”

And as she was walking out of the crowd, she turned her head and had one final look at the castle folk. Paula stood in the middle, stocky, enormous and dark, staring at the turret, and all the colours of the rainbow were reflected in her face.

Goodbye, you monster, Gabrielle thought. She then broke into a trot, passing Valdemar without noticing him, and headed for the garden. In the dark she found the stairs leading up the wall, and climbed.

The rope was where they had left it. She grabbed it and looked down. Her palms grew sweaty.

Fuck planning in haste, exhibit two: why didn’t she get some normal clothes for herself? She’ll now have to ride in this shit dress and these indoors shoes, assuming she won’t kill herself on descent here. And assuming Aerin’s down there.

Clutching the rope, she threw her legs over the edge and then turned herself around, toes to the wall. The shoes offered a thoroughly awful grip on the stones. She began progressing down in tiny steps. Fortunately, the way wasn’t too long.

A minute later, her leg touched the ground. There, she thought. Safely down and totally alive.

As she put down her second leg, she slipped. “Shit!” she yelped, and tumbled down the slope, trying to grab at the shrubs but able to only slightly slow down. Eventually, she reached the bottom, and lay still on her back, damage to dignity more serious than to body.

And then she heard footfalls hurrying towards her.

She grinned at the night sky.

In her field of vision, Aerin appeared, and leaned down to her with his hands on his knees.

“Are you well?” he asked. “Do you have brain damage?”

“Aerin, this plan was the worst plan.”

“Oh, agreed. It fucking sucked.” He glanced up. The sound of the fireworks had stopped. From the inside, they could vaguely hear the voices in the courtyard. “But how about we talk about it somewhere really far away?”

 


	43. Sunshine

The countryside was deserted. There was no one on the farms around Behem to see two horses trotting north in the night. An occasional dog by a farmstead would perform an occasional and only token course of barking, and then lick its snout and get back to sleep.

The land sloped very gently upwards. The valley of the Lene River, which provided fertile and flat land for farming, stretched wide from west to east, and did join the plains of Harmen heartland to the south, but it did not extend far to the north. Behem overlooked the borderland, both to the east, where the forests and lakes of Kontaria spread in the lowlands, and to the north, where hilly and unfarmable grasslands rose higher and higher towards the distant mountains.

The summer night was very brief, and already three hours after midnight the stars were fading and the sky greying, and the world around them rose from darkness to blue murk. What they lost in cover they gained in speed, as they and the horses now saw the road ahead of them. And so they pushed, and as the landscape grew less dim, they could also see that signs of human habitation grew more sparse, and the road narrower and more overgrown.

About four hours after midnight, they scaled the top of a large hill. The sky was a clear blue and the undersides of clouds a vicious pink; the sun was about to rise. Aerin stopped his horse and dismounted.

“Are we taking a break?” Gabrielle asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Come over here.”

From his saddlebag he took out the map which she had stolen from the chapel. The road they were on was marked, though it was a mere trail by now. They were surrounded by grass, field flowers and sparse trees. Below and behind them, the Lene valley stretched far away. In a good distance, more than twenty miles away, Behem Castle stood pallid on its hill.

“This is the last time we see it,” Aerin said. “Once we get past this hill, we’re in the grasslands.”

Gabrielle looked over his shoulder to the parchment. There were still some sparse villages in the grasslands, but they were a little off the road they were to follow. This was a land of shepherds. She tracked the trail with her eyes. According to the map, it was heading for about eighty more miles northeast towards the Blue Cliffs, and then swerving sharp northwards as it reached them, into a forest, to finally end up in the Free City of Ys. From Ys, it was only half a day’s ride to the Kontarian border. Aerin tapped the map.

“We should reach that forest, north of the Blue Cliffs, around sunset tomorrow. And then we’re safe. They won’t find us there.”

She looked at him. “You think we’ll make it?”

“I think they’ll look for us on the road east first, the shortest way. They’ll lose a few hours there, then figure it out, and come looking here. They can exchange horses in every village they find.” He rubbed his head. “I dunno. We have a decent chance.”

She smiled and reached for the waterskin tied to her saddle. She uncorked it, smelled it, and laughed.

“Uh, Aerin. You didn’t steal water.”

Aerin took his own and opened it. It was full of red wine.

“Um. Yeah, it was weird that they’d keep water in the larder.” He smiled. “Let’s keep this. There are plenty of streams along the way anyhow. We’ll drink to our survival when we reach that forest.”

And as he put away the wine, his vision was filled with light. He looked towards its source, to the hilltops in the east.

The sun was rising. He felt its warmth on his skin for the first time since that day they dragged him into the dungeon. He looked directly at it, until it hurt, and then closed his eyes; his eyelids blazed bright red around a luminous teal afterimage.

Just some fifteen hours before, he had been beaten, thrown down in the dark cell, and denied all hope. The redness of his vision grew more intense. His throat contracted.

Gabrielle walked over to him. “So we’ll ride for a couple more hours before resting the horses, right?” she said. “They’re good ones, they can keep going for—”

She yelped as he suddenly grabbed her with both hands and pressed her to him with all his strength.

“Thank you, Gabrielle,” he whispered, and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you.”

For a moment she stood helpless, compressed against his chest. Then she carefully reached around him and patted him on the back.

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re welcome.”

He kept still for a moment yet, then sniffed, let her go and turned around. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but changed his mind and just walked over to his horse. “Yeah, let’s keep riding. They aren’t very tired yet.”

She looked at him, and her own eyes stung for a moment; she shook her head, blinked and smiled.

Then she turned around. Below her, far away, stood Behem. Sun rays were now reaching its highest towers.

She raised both her hands high above her head and extended both her middle fingers, looking at the castle for the last time, and she stood like that unmoving for a good minute in the rising sun. When she felt she had made her point, she turned around, mounted her horse and followed Aerin, to the northeast, further into the grassland.

* * *

 

And a few hours later, Wala, the boy helping in the kitchens of Behem, took some bread, cheese and water, and brought them to the dungeon like he did every morning.

To his surprise, there was nobody in the foreroom. This was very strange indeed; he never before saw Dodo move away from here. Perhaps he was down in the actual dungeons for some reason? Better let him know his breakfast is here.

Wala opened the inner door. “Um… hello?” he said into the stairway leading down.

In response, he thought he felt distant muffled groans.

He hesitated. “Mister Dodo?” he called out. There was definitely some weird voice coming up from below. What the.

He lit a torch and very slowly, ready to retreat at a short notice, started going down. The voice was coming from deep within the dungeon. He passed the large cell with windows opening to the chapel garden and navigated a turn to the right, entering a very dark, very chilly corridor. After a few steps into it, the light of his torch suddenly discovered, laid on the floor and chained to the bars, Clement, the mighty majordomo of Behem.

“What the,” whispered Wala. He trotted over to the man. Clement was gagged, goggling at Wala, and furiously if muffledly shouting. Behind him, locked in the cell, were Dodo and the other guard; the guard, apparently awoken by the torchlight, sat up uncertainly and looked around.

“I, uh. Um,” said Wala.

The guard suddenly opened his eyes wide, bent over, and threw up all over the floor.

“I, uh. Oh dear.”


	44. Shameless

The grassland must have been a forest in times long gone. Here and there, mostly in the floors of the valleys between the hills, groves of ancient trees still persisted, great and dark. Some time before noon they arrived at one larger than any before it, sprawling across its entire valley, several miles across. They rode through it, in motley leafshade and tranquil birdsong, among the thick and moss-covered trunks, until they arrived at a wide brook which nourished these woods, which flowed through their heart.

Their horses were winded. They’d made good pace since leaving Behem. It was now time to rest.

Off the road by the brook was a large and sunny meadow. Aerin unsaddled the horses, placed the saddles under one of the old trees, and went to the stream. He splashed cool water on his face and sighed with satisfaction. Gabrielle massaged her legs. Her dress, having brushed by so many field flowers, was no longer a spotless white; she now had a garment of many colours.

She rummaged about the saddlebags and produced an apple. She sat down at the tree and bit on it, watching Aerin intently.

They hadn’t slept that night at all, and yet they were alert and felt fully awake. They were silent, but they were both thinking the same thing. For the first time ever they were alone, one on one, with time to spare, and no bars between them, and no people to interrupt them. Their bodies urged for one another. The wanting, dilating, yearning, throbbing. And they both knew that the other felt that too; and they both knew that the other knew; like an image in two mirrors standing face to face, this mutual desire, this mutual knowing, reflected infinitely in their minds, self-reinforcing, cheerful, irrepressible.

He slowly pulled off his boots and let the stream wash over his feet. He turned and saw her watch him, dark blue eyes in intense gaze. A smile brightened up his face.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She bit her lip.

“Pass me an apple, will you.”

Instead of getting a new one, she tossed him the one she had half-eaten. He caught it neatly with one hand, congratulating himself on making that look cool. He took a bite, putting his lips where hers had just been.

He’d savour the anticipation some more, but this was quickly becoming torturous. His cock was hard and seeping precum into his underwear, and his whole lower back ached for her body, heavy dull excitement demanding to be expressed. He finished the apple, threw the core into the water, and stood up. The ten or so steps he had to make towards her were the longest walk he ever had to take. He hoped he still looked cool and casual, but he was aware he was blushing like a complete idiot. She was unimaginably gorgeous, soft curves, messy dress, flowing blond hair and all.

She smiled and rose up. Her insides were preyed upon by monstrous butterflies. She still made him shy, she saw, his pale eyes contrasting with his blush. Damn. Could that guy _be_ any more adorable?

He stopped right in front of her. He looked right into her. Face to face, front to front, eye to eye. Infinite reflection. If lust could burn, this whole forest would be cinders.

She lifted up one corner of her lips. “You want something, boy?” she asked.

He put his hands flat on the tree, on both sides of her head. Though there was still no physical contact between them, the nape of her neck tingled, as if her nerves were caught in a delightful magnetic current that radiated from him; it travelled down her spine, and her knees weakened. If these hands aren’t all over me in a minute, then I swear, I’m gonna die of thirst right here by a river.

“There is something, yeah.”

“Yeah?” She couldn’t keep a straight face, but at least she kept her voice level. “What do you want?”

His fingers twitched on the tree trunk. How best to put it? Blatantly, I guess. “I want to watch your naked body squirm under mine. I want to watch you lose control. I want to hear your voice break. I want to hear you moan out my name again,” he said.

The current surged. She grabbed his vest and pulled him close, very close. His hair was in her face, his breath on her mouth. She saw herself reflected in his pupils. She licked her teeth. “Moan out your name?” she said, placing her hand on his cheek. “Well then. Make me.”

Some fumbling, pushing, pulling and unclasping ensued, and finally they managed to get themselves down to their underwear, and were now kissing with her back pressed to the tree and her hands frantically tracing her favourite muscles of his smooth lean body. She eventually came to rest them on his chest, and pushed him gently away at an arm’s length.

“Fuck, that was a long wait,” she said, running her hands down, by his abs, to his pants, which she pulled down to his thighs with one sharp motion. His cock shot up, finally free, firm and ready.

“Think how long it was for me, in that dungeon.”

She kneeled down and lifted his cock by the head. “At least you had this thing to play with all day. I was locked in with the monks, listening to them talk, all while thinking of this.” She tapped her finger between his balls, soft, springy. “Drooling, thinking of doing this,” she kissed the underside of his cock at the base, then again, an inch higher, and again. He was so hard under her lips, that solid pipe running from balls to the head protruding out throughout the length of his shaft, two long dimples along its sides. She traced one of the dimples with the tip of her tongue, slowly, deliberately. She felt his pulse in her hand.

He rode out the wave of sheer delight, her licking him where he felt most naked. “You think you had it bad, then? I had to deal with being locked up, and with waiting for an interrogation, and, worst of all,  with a terrifying girl that was mean, kept calling me names, and chained me down to places!”

She looked up at him. “Those moans of yours were from being terrified, then?” She kissed away his precum, rested her lips right at the tip of his cock, and smiled. There it was again, her playful, mocking smile, which made him fall for her so awfully bad. At this moment he not only saw it, but felt it too – with the tip of his cock, which was now hidden in the moist warmth of the inside of her upper lip, sensing the tiniest movement of her mouth with agonising intensity. She may have been on her knees before him, but she had him at her mercy. Ah! You can’t keep getting away with this, evil queen!

“You know what?” he said, taking his cock out of her mouth and kneeling down too, “I think I need to teach you a lesson.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He laid his hand delicately on her chin. “I think I’m going to tie you down and fuck you while you can’t do anything about it, and we’ll see how you like it then.”

Her mind dislodged itself and raged around in her skull like a loose firework. Yes. Yes! Tie me down, make me defenceless against you, take me hard, unleash your body on mine, fuck me to tiny pieces you absolute stunner of a boy!

“Are you now,” she said, a little hoarsely.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down to the sunny moss. The tree sprouted a thick exposed root behind her, rising in an arch over ground. He pulled her unresisting hands over her head and held her wrists to the root. He reached and grabbed from his saddle a long leather cord. She bit her lip when the leather bound her, hard, digging into her skin. He tied the knot like he meant it. She tried to move her hands, but they were fixed securely.

This accomplished, he loosened and threw away the cloth band over her chest, exposing her naked breasts; he then pulled off her underwear, and sat at her ankles, and looked all over her.

Naked, helpless on her back, and tied up, she lost absolutely nothing of her royal lustre. She looked him straight in the eyes, with the same cheeky, derisive smile, as if challenging him. Alright, boy, you got me where you want me. Now, what are you going to do to me?

“Comfortable down there, are we, Princess?”

She shifted her back in the sensuously soft moss, contrasting with the sharp, acute arousal raging inside her. “How can I be? I’ve been captured by my enemy, who’s going to have his way with me! Cruel fucking fates!”

“Yeah. Honestly, you’re in trouble now.” He ran his fingers up her right shin and stopped at her knee, scabbed where she had grazed it against the bars. “Oh no,” he muttered. “Blue blood is leaking.” His touch stung on the still fresh chafe.

“Your fault, by the way. If you did a worse job licking me, I’d have noticed that asshole sooner.”

He smiled. “I guess that’s right. Sorry, knee.” He kissed her where she was bruised, and then his lips travelled upwards, through the inside of her leg, where her skin got warmer, softer, more delicate; she started breathing more heavily as he made a very thorough job of kissing every inch of the pit of her inner thigh. When he was done, he kissed her pussy, just once, and then slid forward on his knees, placing them inside her thighs. He wiped the thin thread of glistening liquid off his chin with the back of his hand, and rested the base of his cock on her clit.

“I like the way you taste when you’re turned on,” he said.

“Will you stop talking and put that thing in me?”

He shifted his hips a bit, rubbing her clit with his erection. He was dying to do just that. Just a bit more.

“You want it that bad, ah?” He jabbed her lightly with his fingers on both sides of her body, at the waistline, prompting from her a little jolt. “Bet you really wish you were in control right now…” His palms moved upwards over her ribs, propelled by his fingers tip-topping leg-like on her naked skin, reached her breasts, and grabbed at them, sinking softly into the flesh. “…but you’re not,” he finished, and shot her a bright shameless grin, which would have been disarming had her arms not already been put out of action.

She bared her teeth and under his hands he felt her chest rise and fall to her panting breath, erratic with desire and stifled laughter. “Aerin, you’re the worst,” she managed. “You’re the worst and letting you do this was such a bad idea!”

He moved his hands around her breasts and played with them, squeezing, letting go, caressing along the curves. She made some quiet gasps and arched herself upwards, to catch more of his touch. “You only need to say one word and I’ll untie you. But you won’t, you know why?” His index fingers glid over to her nipples, and circled her areolas. “Fuck! Aah,” she said, jolting again, closing her eyes. Her pussy was dribbling all over his balls. “You won’t do it because you want to surrender to me. You want it really, really bad.” She felt him take her erect nipples between his fingers and his thumbs, give a little roll, and then a little pinch. Current, surge, jolt. “Aw fuck! Worst! Mhm! Mhm. Worst, worst, gods, mhm, worstworstworstworstworst…”

He watched her react with growing delight. He was really getting on her nerves now. Nerves, yeah. He’d find all her most sensitive ones, and play them, make them sing, build up her pleasure until…

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of an inquisitive horse, which had come over unnoticed and now leaned its head down right in front of him and over the prone girl to investigate the outlandish human proceedings currently taking place.

“Mate, no, not right now!” Aerin said, pushing it back by the muzzle. Gabrielle opened her eyes and broke out in laughter. The horse snorted, turned around and stepped back several paces, sometimes glancing back at them with increasing scepticism.

Aerin put his hands on Gabrielle’s hips. What was he doing, then? The girl was still laughing, and it made her stomach flex, and her breasts jiggle. Most beautiful sound, most beautiful sight. Breeze caressed his naked skin, cool on his cock where it was coated with precum. His self-control plummeted. He wanted her. He needed her, now.

Her laughter trailed off when he leaned down to her, put his hand on her cheek, put his forehead to hers.

“Alright,” he said. The head of his cock slid down, and rested by her opening. “Alright, I’m gonna give you what you want.” He now rested his lower lip on hers, and looked her deep in the eyes. “Because I really…” a little push forward, his tip plugging her, “…really…” his head pressing in up to its ridge; gasp into his mouth, eyes lost in eyes; arms jerking instinctively to grab him, but held fast by the leather; “…really like you.” Smile. Smile. Push, in. Eyes closed, kiss. His tongue on hers, in her mouth, past her teeth. Elsewhere, in the middle, inches of hard Kontarian cock sliding in, filling, stuffing, widening, expansion, exploration, excitement. Two voices vibrating at once.

They broke off the kiss. She threw her head back, closed her eyes, and wrapped her legs around his back, focusing on the sensation, again, finally, of him inside of her. He rested his cheekbone on hers, and gave a short laugh, out of sheer joy of being inside her; putting his dick where it rightfully belonged was so liberating, and the warmth of her body, her wetness, her grip, seemed to envelop his entire being.

He gave her a peck on the jaw and raised his upper body again, kneeling erect over her, freeing his hands from supporting his weight. For the first few thrusts he just held her by the hips, relishing in her body; but there was even more fun to be had.

His left hand slid over to her underbelly, where his fingers could feel her muscles as they flexed and unflexed, and with his thumb he could lurk around and over her clit. His right hand wandered over to her midriff, and he tried to find out where was it that she was most ticklish. Judging by how she flexed, writhed and twisted, the best spot was the dimple to the side of her abs, just below her ribcage. He kept picking at it, over her protests and dodges, with one hand, then with both hands at both sides, and now her whole body was squirming and bending, and he began to lose himself.

He grabbed her forcefully by the ribs and pushed her down hard into the moss, and pushed into her with strong, heavy thrusts. He felt her lungs empty under his hands as she let out a long, high-pitched sigh. She opened her eyes to look at him.

He really looked like he was losing control. His hair fell over his eyes, drops of sweat were trickling down his skin, and all his muscles were tense, chest expanding and contracting rapidly, abs rising in columns along his lean stomach, and descending in a V along his hips, to his pubic mound, and all of this growing from in between her legs, where his cock was pushing her open, advancing and retreating. His body was simply glorious, and all its raw energy was focused on her, on her only…

Between them, a rapid rhythm emerged. Their breathing grew vocal in their throats, sighs and moans rising freely over the sound of the brook. A gloss of sweat covered them both, and breeze skimmed on skin. Minutes flickered on and dissolved, all time lost but the present moment. Pleasure mounted, thrust by thrust, the head of his cock smothered by her inner walls, her clit under his thumb, silky slick liquid little gliding flowing and lighting up the absolute deepest cores of their bodies…

He felt he was about to come. He needed to come, badly, right inside her. But not yet, not yet! He’d forgotten himself. The girl hasn’t yet been teased enough!

He slipped out of her, again resting his cock on her clit, breathing heavily in gasping moans, fighting down his orgasm.

“Aerin, put it back in right now!”

He blinked and wiped the sweat away from his forehead. He tried to bring his breathing back under control.

“Ask me nicely,” he said. He rubbed her clit gently with his shaft. His penis was coated in clear liquid, and throbbing achingly in the air.

She jerked her hands angrily in their binds. “Please, please put your cock back inside me!”

His breathing evened more or less, though his racing heart never even considered slowing down. He tapped at her sternum with his index finger, then traced the winding groove which started there and went all the way to her navel.

“You’re so cute when you’re polite,” he said.

“I’m always polite! Now I’m warning you…”

“You’re not always polite. You called me names, remember…?” Suddenly, a wicked grin appeared on his face, lopsided, dimpling his right cheek. She looked at the glint in his eye, and at the array of teeth, and saw that he was up to no good, and a fresh wave of arousal buoyed up her mind.

“Tell me you’re my dirty little slut,” he said.

Ah, fuck! She shakily laughed out loud. “Boy, don’t push your luck!” That shameless, gorgeous bastard! Not so shy now.

“Suit yourself. I’m not going back in until I hear the truth.” He shifted his body, straightening out his legs behind him and transferring his weight to his thighs, leaning close to her. He brought his face to her chest and started sucking at her nipple, his hands gently and slowly tracing down her ticklish sides, his cock pulsing in wait against her clit…

This was absolutely, completely unbearable.

“Alright fine, I’m your dirty little slut! I’m your submissive loyal girl! Now take me you fuck or I swear, I’ll, aaahhh…”

Her threat died out as he re-entered her, thrusting hard, his finger picking at her clit, his mouth at her nipple. She felt her whole body tingle. She was almost there. “That’s right, take me, take me hard, I’m all yours, I’m your girl…” He must have kicked open some floodgates in her brain. Her consciousness demanded that she stop airing out all the embarrassing things welling up from underneath her mind for him and the horses to hear, but it was like trying to stop a roaring waterfall with your bare hands. His lips moved up to her collarbones, his free hand diving in her hair to rest on top of her head. “Fuck me Aerin, fuck me, make me, all yours…” She lost all coherence. She was there. She gasped for air one last time before her oncoming orgasm.

With one quick movement, he yanked her hair and pulled her head back and kissed her on her throat.

Her nervous system went into a raging anarchy. She screamed his name, on top of her voice; she arched her back and almost threw him off; her legs kicked out uncontrolled, ripping up tufts of moss into the air; her fingers curled and twisted and the muscles of her arms contracted, and the leather cord groaned sharply under pressure.

He felt her scream, the vibrations directly on his lips. He held onto her as her whole body rocked. Her pussy closed around him with frenzied contractions. Oh, thank the gods. He couldn’t have held out for much longer. There was no stopping now. He could fall freely. He adored this girl so, so much.

“Gabrielle…” he moaned. He felt like he was collapsing into her, a wave of pleasure hurling him inside her, and he buried his forehead between her neck and collarbone as his muscles came free from his control, gave up with a shudder, and let him squirt his seed into her.

She still vocalized the first few breaths after her orgasm. Her body, abandoned by the mind, held on absurdly contorted and unsure what to do. Finally, she swallowed, loosened all her muscles, let herself fall back on the moss, and opened her eyes.

Foliage was swaying gently overhead. She heard it, though her ears were ringing. She was fairly sure she still had all her limbs. His body was resting heavy on hers. Her wrists were stinging.

A moment or two passed.

“Aerin?”

“Hm?”

“Will you untie me now?”

He only reacted after a while. He sat up languidly and fiddled with the knot, succeeding at about his third try. Free at long last, she sat up by him and rubbed at her chafed skin.

“Thank you,” she said. She wriggled her fingers for a bit. Then she folded them into a fist and punched him on the chest with the outside of her palm.

“Oh fuck!” he said, laughing.

“You asshole!” she punched him again. “You absolute degenerate!” She lunged at him and pinned him by his collarbones flat on his back to the ground. “What the fuck did you make me say?” He just kept laughing, not defending himself from renewed punches; he raised the back of his right hand to his forehead and wore the smuggest, most self-satisfied grin on his stupid face. She leaned down to kiss it off his lips, and took a very long time to do it, breaking off and coming back for more, until their breathing levelled, their hearts slowed down, and finally she just lay still splayed on top of him, her head laid by his in the moss, their inner thighs a wet mess.

She rested her ear on his neck. She could hear his blood roll through his arteries, the air move through his windpipe.

If Paula had it her way, somebody would probably be slicing all of this open right about now.

What was going on in Behem at this moment? The thought of Paula’s and Clement’s humiliation, having lost both the prisoner and the princess, and with Oren there to witness it, put her in an even better mood, though she thought she had already maxed out.

She ruffled Aerin’s hair and kissed him under the jaw. “Idiot,” she murmured into his skin.

He lay still, her weight pushing him delightfully into the moss, her breasts resting on his chest and pressing against it softly with his every breath. He put his arms around her and looked idly at the endless summer sky overhead. He’d been right, he thought: the world isn’t such a bad place after all.


	45. The Blue Cliffs

They saw the cart from far away, lumbering slowly towards Behem in the afternoon sun. There was no point getting off the road now – if they saw it, its driver saw them.

The driver was an old peasant with a white beard. They exchanged a short greeting and went their own ways. The peasant was looking at them curiously. They made an odd pair to find out here – her especially, in her dirty white courtly dress – and he would be sure to mention them if a pursuit found him on the way. But there was nothing to be done. If they stayed on the road, they would keep meeting people. If they stayed off, their progress would be too slow. And so they stayed on, only going cross-country to circle around the occasional village.

“They wouldn’t still chase you out of Harmen, right?” Aerin asked. It was one of those things they should probably have talked over before, but what can you do.

“I’m not that important.”

“What will they do to you if they catch us?”

“Executions of traitors can get pretty grim, though maybe I’d get a nicer one because I’m a girl. Drowning, maybe?”

“They really wouldn’t forgive you? Even though you’re a princess?”

She shook her head. The only thing that anyone in Harmen gave a shit about was honour, and she had dishonoured a whole load of people the night before. The fact that she had royal blood made it even worse, in fact. A shocking upset for Harmeni respectability. They’d want to make a good example out of her.

Late in the afternoon he climbed a solitary tree they came across on a hilltop.

“If you end up falling down and killing yourself,” she shouted, head arched upwards, “I’m going to kick your corpse’s ass until it fucking falls off!”

“I’ve been doing this all my life idiot, I’m not gonna fall!” he shouted back. He was thirty feet above ground and he judged this was about as high as he could go, the branches and the trunk starting to grow precariously lean. He looked west, to the road they had travelled.

The view was open for miles and miles. Grassy hills rolled like ocean under the mild sky, sometimes marked with a hamlet, a herd of sheep, or a grove. Far, far off, he could see a dark valley – the woods where they had made their rest. He smiled at it.

But most importantly, the road was clear. He could make out some fellow travellers that they had passed earlier, but there was no sign of a pursuit. Somewhere over the horizon, where the sun was low, was Behem. He turned around. Somewhere over the other horizon, yet unseen, were the Blue Cliffs and the forest by the City of Ys.

“We’re more than halfway there,” he said, back on the ground. “We’ll make it to the edge of the forest by sunset tomorrow.”

“They’ve probably figured out we’re on this road by now,” she said.

They probably have. With no local witnesses to their presence on the road directly between Behem and Kontaria, they’d at least be sending a speculative pursuit this way.

He’d considered just hiding in one of the groves for a couple of days, but they were very low on food, and with all these locals that had seen them around they could expect the number of search parties to only increase with time. Their only real option was to keep pushing, and to beat them to the forest by Ys, where they would finally be safe.

At nightfall they stopped by a clump of trees where they wouldn’t be noticed from the road. Starshine was dazzling and brilliant over them, and though the night got chilly, they did a very bad job of keeping their clothes on. Dawn found them already trotting eastward, towards the sun. As hours passed, the landscape changed around them, the grass now longer and tawny, and more and more granite rocks scattered among the hills.

Around noon, Aerin climbed another tree on another hilltop. There was nobody on the road – there was no sign of any living creature around at all, except for a fairly large village by a lake somewhat off the road, and for the birds flying high in the hot air. In the north, far away, the mountains glistened, tops white even at this time of year. And then he looked east, and his heart beat faster. Some twenty miles ahead, the land broke off into a sudden horizon.

The Blue Cliffs. He’d seen them a few times, from below. A gigantic, vertical stone exposure running north to south for a great many miles, as if the whole continent was broken in half. Above them was this grassy hill land of Harmen. Below – Ys, the borderlands, and Kontaria.

They were almost out of food, but it didn’t matter now. The forest by Ys would sustain them with enough berries for the way. They pushed on and on, though their horses, after two days on the trot with too little rest, were noticeably slowing down. The road winded relentlessly up and down, over the crests of endless parallel hills, over the valleys between them where streams provided them and the horses with water. Around four hours after noon the wind picked up, rolling great tan waves over the grassland. Swallows circled and squeaked above them.

Two hours later still they reached one more hilltop, higher than any that preceded. And as the vista opened beyond it, Aerin reached out, squeezed Gabrielle’s shoulder, and guffawed.

Some six miles ahead, over just a few more hills, the highland stopped and dropped a thousand feet in freefall. Unwilling to take the plunge, the road swerved to the left just before the verge, and in just a few more miles disappeared into a dense forest.

But he only glanced at those things. He immediately turned south, where beyond the cliffs the view stretched on forever and ever, maybe even to the sea. And there, beyond the open slanting plain of the borderland, was another forest, dark and indistinct in the haze at this distance, dotted all around with dim lakes.

Kontaria. Actually Kontaria. 

It took a while before he moved again; he looked around, rode a short way to an old larch nearby, then dismounted.

“You just can’t help climbing every tree you find, can you?” she said with a laugh. His mood, the view, and the early evening light worked on her too; she felt like she could fly.

“Last one. If they’re not close behind us by now, they will never be.”

Two hours, he thought, leaping up through the branches. Just two more hours and we’ve made it.

Gabrielle dismounted too, and stretched her arms above her head. All her muscles were hurting, but it was almost over. They were almost free. She looked to Aerin, climbing against the purplish sky.

He never reached the top of the tree. Just halfway through, he glanced westward, and stopped.

Some ten horsemen were on the road, maybe five miles away. They were riding hard and fast towards them. They must have gotten fresh horses only recently from that village by the lake. They knew what they were doing. They were racing against the sunset to get to the edge of the forest. Aerin gripped a branch and exhaled through his teeth, very slowly.

“What’s going on?” Gabrielle asked.

“Get on the horse,” he said, and started down.

She swore. He leapt down and climbed his horse at once.

“How close are they?” she asked. It didn’t take much brainpower to guess what he saw.

“Very. Maybe ten of them. Hurry,” he said, and prodded his horse onward.

She followed him, glancing back uncertainly. The forest was so close now. They couldn’t be close enough, surely?

Aerin tried to get his horse to gallop, but it barely even trotted anymore. Gabrielle felt anxiety at first, then outright fear. They were within sight of safety. Can’t all of Harmen just leave them the fuck alone? Will nothing drive them away?

Less than an hour later they scaled, with difficulty, the final hill before the cliffs. Just a short ride down a gentle slope ahead of them, the world was ending.

This is when she too saw them, on top of the hill with the tree. They must have seen them as well. They rushed towards them, fast.

She looked to the forest’s edge and a grim rigidness took over her. Three more miles at least. Her horse was wheezing underneath her and was soaked with sweat. They weren’t making it before the pursuit.

Aerin looked around with despair. There was nowhere to hide out here. There were only some sparse, thin trees, and knee-high dry grass.

“To the cliffs,” he said. “Maybe there’s some way down.”


	46. We Both Go Down Together

It took them twenty more minutes to get to the verge. There they jumped off their exhausted horses and looked down. Their pursuers were now hidden from their view, behind the crest of the last hill. The forest’s wall was to their left, dark and inviting, and too far away.

There was a thousand feet worth of sheer vertical fall. There were ledges here and there, and occasionally an enterprising tree growing out of some nook, but there was no question about it – nobody could get down through here alive.

Still Aerin paced along the edge, looking for something, anything. Four or five dry trees were growing by the precipice. There was a wide ledge not far from them, about four feet below the brink. He jumped to it, walked to its end, and looked down. There was another ledge below, but it was maybe six hundred feet down. He stared. There was a soft sound behind him as Gabrielle jumped down and walked over.

They said nothing, just looking down for a moment. This was the end of all ways.

She turned away. “Aerin, let’s hide here,” she said. Where their ledge projected out of the cliff there was a cavern, just about large enough for two people to crawl into. A large, hard-leafed shrub was growing by its side, and if they hacked it down and used it to cover the entrance, they might just hide there, unnoticed from the ledge—

But only by someone who wouldn’t be looking for them. Their pursuers would drop to this ledge and check the bush first thing. This, too, was hopeless.

They climbed back up to the grass, and faced the setting sun. In some twenty minutes, the riders would appear over the top of the slope above them, and then, after maybe ten more minutes, they would be here.

She grabbed his hand.

“I’m sure it won’t hurt, jumping from such height,” she said.

He closed his eyes. “Gabrielle, maybe they’ll forgive you. If your family talks to the King, or something…”

She hugged him. “There’s no more life in Harmen for me than there is for you. I just want you to know that I don’t regret anything,” she said. He knew, he knew. He hugged her back. He wanted to cry. He looked around again. Nothing here to help them, just the long dry grass and the short dry trees. Purple sky, gentle breeze. Birds overhead, black silhouettes.

Black birds, dry branches.

A leap of memory, a sudden association. And immediately, in a flash, everything connected. The branches, the grass, the cord, the wine. It was enough. It was just enough. He had twenty minutes.

“Fuck!” He let go of her forcefully and ran for the horses. “Grab a knife and cut me as much grass as you can,” he shouted over his shoulder.

She looked at him, not understanding. “Why? What are you gonna do?”

Hands trembling, he unstrapped the hatchet from his saddle. “Scarecrows,” he said. “Scarecrows to make the jump for us!”

She paused. She got it. If they made decoys and dropped them down to that ledge far below… it was a really long distance away, hard to see, they wouldn’t even have to be very good decoys…

She rushed to her horse and took out her knife and started slashing at the grass with mad determination. He reached the trees and chopped off some of the straighter branches. He sprinted back, took the leather cord, and with shaking fingers started tying the branches together. In his imagination he could hear hoofbeats from beyond the hill. They had maybe ten more minutes before the riders would reappear and see them.

He’d always liked to amuse himself by making the frames of his scarecrows realistic and humanlike, proper joints and proportions and all. He’d figured out all the right knots. Muscle memory now took over. He was ready in no time, two skeletal bases for their would-be saviours at his feet.

She brought him whole bunches of hay. They tied them around the frames, giving bulk. He took the wineskins and fastened them where the scarecrows’ heads would be. Time was running out at an alarming rate.

They stripped to their underwear and put their clothes on the decoys. She had to give it to him – they were well proportioned and sturdy, impressively so for such quick work. From a long way out, they might just do the trick. But then she realized a problem. His vest had a hood; her dress had none.

“Cut off my hair,” she said, handing him the knife.

“What?”

“You gotta make the head look real!” She kneeled, then gripped and pulled the locks up from her neck, giving him a better access.

He was glad he had no time for regret as the blade cut away. He still felt a pang of heartache when he ended up with a hand full of golden strands, which he then tied tight together and then to the wineskin. Up close, the Gabrielle scarecrow looked absolutely ridiculous, a tail of human hair sprouting out of a leather bag, a courtly dress filled with hay. The Aerin scarecrow at least had baggy clothes to hide its own absurdity.

She jumped to the ledge and chopped down the bush by the cavern. The leftover stump was bright and white, freshly injured wood; she grabbed some loose soil and rubbed it on, covering it as best as she could. Aerin took the knife and one last fast look around, checking if they left nothing behind to hint at what they’ve done.

“Thanks, you did great,” he said to the horses. Then he grabbed the decoys and jumped down to the ledge next to Gabrielle, crouching down. From their position, they could keep their eyes just at the level of the cliff’s edge, observing the hill but themselves hidden, by the cliff and by the grass.

“When they appear over the hill,” he said, handing to her the Gabrielle scarecrow, “we’ll let them just catch a glimpse of the decoys for like two seconds, then bring them down. Enough time to notice, not enough to think. Then we crawl over to the brink and aim them at that ledge far below. If we stay low they won’t see that.” He uncertainly judged the distances. “I think.”

She nodded and they lifted up the decoys, two figures at the verge. They were both breathing quickly, and quaking with sheer adrenalin. She glanced at the knife that he had dropped beside him, its sharp point gleaming at her. She guessed at why he brought it here, that one thing.

“If this doesn’t work, you’ll kill me before going yourself, right?” she asked.

He gripped the scarecrow harder, and just looked at her. He couldn’t answer that. “You still look cute,” he managed.

“What?”

“With short hair. I’ll cut them a bit more evenly if we live, okay?”

She laughed.

“Gods, it would be so much easier if you were just born a Harmeni noble. We would have met on my vast veranda, and we’d have lived carefree.”

“But then we’d never have had this idiotic adventure. Would anything compare?”

Birds cried, darting around them.

“Who knows. Doesn’t matter now. We both go down together.”

Over the hill, the riders appeared.

The view opened wide before them, a slope leading down to the far-off verge, and on the verge two figures standing, and a moment later, leaning down and falling.

Aerin and Gabrielle heard their shouts when, with a flutter, off the scarecrows went.

The wineskins gave them weight and stability; they fell headfirst for several long seconds, in good straight lines, and then hit the ledge with a heavy splash.

The impact broke their frames and dry grass flew everywhere, but the clothes and the cords kept the scarecrows intact. There they lay, tiny from so far away, two shattered figures side by side. Around them, splatters of wine were blood-dark and gruesomely picturesque in the dusk, red stains on grey rock.

They scrambled for the cavern. Holding on to each other, lying on their sides, they could fit in with a little room to spare. She pulled in the bush and wedged its stem between two stones. They could now watch the ledge from behind dense leaves, hidden in shadow. There was nothing more to be done.

She turned her back to the ledge, facing him.

“I don’t want to watch,” she said. He put the knife, the final resort, on the ground next to them, and listened. If they were going to be found, they had about ten minutes of freedom, ten minutes of life left.

They were lying next to each other, almost naked.

She put her hand flat on his chest, over his beating heart. He took her head in his hands, and she smiled.

“I’m so glad I’ve met you,” she said. “I was afraid for a while that there are no people like you.”

“What, scarecrow artisans?”

She laughed, and leaned closer to him. “There’s just no cruelty in you, is there? You’re just good intentions, lame jokes, and a cute smile.”

“Huh.” He traced her eyebrow with his thumb. “We… kind of get each other, don’t we?”

“Hm.”

“Though my jokes are not lame. And also, shit, they really got you to be sort of jaded, didn’t they?”

“I was just afraid. For a while. S’all.” She paused, imagining she’s heard distant hoofbeats; but the only beat she sensed was his heart under her hand. She shook her head, suddenly resolved.

“Hey, Aerin.”

“What?”

“If we only have minutes of life left, let’s not spend this time in fear of them. Let’s make the most of it.” Her hand glided over his body and reached unopposed into his underwear, resting on his cock. “You think we can?”

He looked at her, and some inner warmth flowed through him, and unfolded on his face a broad grin. There was really no stopping this girl from being herself. Under her fingers, he swelled eagerly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we can.”


	47. Human to Human

There was barely space for anything. With a lot of bending and twisting they rid themselves of what little clothing they had left, and discarded it somewhere at their feet. A thin layer of loose soil protected bare skin from bare rock; still, as he rolled over astride her, a lot of scuttling and adjusting had to take place before they found a position that was anywhere near comfortable. He put his hand under her head, strands of her hair getting wedged between his fingers, hair now not much longer than his own. He smiled down at her.

“Gabrielle, this…” he shifted his elbow away from a pebble that was painfully digging into it, “this might not end up being the best sex ever had.”

“We’ll make the most of it, boy,” she repeated. His cock was lying erect against her pubic mound. She shifted her hips, grinding against it. “You won’t make me ask you to put it in this time, will you?”

He rested his forehead on hers and snorted lightly. “No, I won’t.” He waited a moment still, enjoying the full naked contact, her skin on his skin. Then he jerked his head back and shook it, failing to get hair out of his eyes. His cock fell heavily in between her thighs. She parted them, spreading her legs, and he carefully readjusted his knees to lie between hers. Her irises were shining up at him, her lips parted; the muscles of her neck taut, in clear cut relief; and when he slowly rolled his hips forward, sliding into her, she gasped for air, and the shadows beneath her collarbones deepened sharply.

There was some netherworldly silence about this shallow cavern. All they could hear was each other’s rasping breath as he kept pushing in. She put one hand on his shoulder blades, the other on the small of his back, and felt his entire body inch forward in gliding motion, until she took all of him, fulfilled, complete.

His weight pressed her down. He thrusted, once, twice, found a short, a little off-beat rhythm, and took her that way, intensely, urgently, chest grinding against breasts, cheekbone to cheekbone. Under her hands, his back muscles flexed hard, his spine whipped forward and back; on her neck, his panting was hot and tense; his raw fervour spread to her, aroused her; her nails dug into his skin and she groaned, deep from her throat.

Her reaction made him moan, his gentle voice playing smoothly on his chords. He lifted himself up a little and kissed her in the middle of her forehead, then on its side, then on her temple, then on her cheekbone; then hovered above her mouth, and looked at her, and she at him; and their eyes met.

They looked on, as if surprised to see each other. His hips, from sheer automatism, thrust a few more times, slowing down, and trailed off at a forward push. Thus they now lay still, for a long moment out of time, his throbbing pulse deep in her, flesh to flesh, heartbeat to heartbeat, eye to eye, human to human.

He shut his parted lips and swallowed loudly.

“Gabrielle,” he whispered.

“Aerin,” she responded.

“Have I ever told you how… how being with you, this way…” Her warm, wet walls held him tight, a radiant, intimate sensation. “…How happy it makes me feel? How happy you make me?”

Her smile was bright, friendly. “I don’t think you have. Honestly, we mostly talked shit whenever naked together.”

“Well, I’m telling you. You need to know.”

“Oh, I know. Your body language has been perfectly expressive.”

“I know that you know.” He looked aside, and smiled sheepishly. His cock twitched, surrounded by her. “I still wanted to tell you, though.”

She giggled and placed her hands on his cheeks. She shifted her back a little; stones were painfully pressing against her. “My starry-eyed boy. Look at me.” Blue. “You’re such an adorable warm softy inside.”

He gave a tiny shrug. “Yeah. I’m just like you.”

“Just like me.” She paused. “I really wish I got to… I really wish I’ll get to spend more time with you.” Hoofbeats were now audible, horses galloping in the distance, coming closer. She forced the sound out of her mind. They have no right to interfere with them, not now. She focused on the sensation of his cock filling her, feeling so delightful, so right.

“You’re so hard, Aerin.” She never took her eyes off his. They took in every shade of colour in each other’s irises. His whole body gave a little shudder. He was aching now, stiff to the limit, tense and yearning. “I feel the same being with you. But you know that. Please be with me now. Keep looking at me, and show me. Show me what you feel for me.”

He bared his teeth, tightened his grip, and started thrusting, deeply, strongly, desperately. Her eyebrows bent, and above them, towards their inner ends, tiny dimples appeared on her forehead. She sighed. If they found her, she wanted to be found stuffed full of him. They can bury her with his cock inside her, too. Here lies Gabrielle, died as she lived. Let all the world know.

With every thrust, he leaned a little bit closer to her. The hoofbeats were loud now, joined by shouts. They were almost here. He pushed all the way into her and rested his lower lip on hers, tasting her breath.

“Cum for me,” she whispered. Her hands travelled to the back of his head. “Show me. Look at me. Cum for me.”

He bit her lip. The tingling warmth building up in him mounted, swelled, and overflowed. With a quiet sigh and a twitch in his cheek he gave himself up to her, collapsed into her and let her swallow him whole, never breaking eye contact, letting her watch him, letting her see his naked soul melt into her. And she watched, she felt, his cock bulging and surging inside her, making her complete, and all her body and all her mind were open and exposed to him, welcoming him, overrun by him, letting him pass through and fill every last bit of her with his presence.

She exhaled and ran her fingers through his hair. “There, boy,” she whispered. Above them, a world apart, a horse stopped. They rolled over to their sides, Gabrielle with her back to the cavern’s opening. She hid her face in his chest.

“Here!” a voice sounded.

More horses clopped over. Some people were dismounting, feet falling heavily to the ground.

“There’s a ledge here.” She shut her eyes tight.

Now a soldier jumped down. In the spaces between the leaves Aerin saw him up to his midriff, three feet away, separated from them only by the bush. The soldier’s feet rotated as he was taking a quick look around, and then took a couple steps to the edge.

Aerin gripped the knife. He felt Gabrielle breathe against him. A thick drop of his seed spilled out of her and trailed warmly down her thigh.

“Shit,” said the soldier.

Another man dropped down and walked over to the first.

“Alive or dead?”

“Look, had they been nothing but gossamer, feather, air, falling so far down they’d still have smashed like eggs.”

“Mate what, are you a fucking poet now?”

“Well, this is, I mean, tragic like, no? Anyone would get poetical!”

“Ugh. Sir! Sir, here!”

A third man jumped down and joined the two. In a riding outfit and only seen from behind he was unrecognizable. It was only when he spoke that they knew him.

“What a mess,” Clement said, and crouched down, so that Aerin now saw the back of his head. Some more soldiers dropped down to the ledge to take a peek.

“No way we can recover the bodies from down there,” one said.

Clement turned his head to the side and ran his hand through his hair. Aerin could now see his face in profile, red in the sunset glow. Ignore the bush, he tried to will him. Nothing to be seen here. Ignore it. The knife’s handle felt clammy in his shaking hand. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. Go away. Just go away.

Clement kept thinking about something. A swallow passed the ledge, calling out. The wind subsided. The soldiers waited.

Then abruptly Clement slapped his thighs and got up.

“What a disaster, this whole affair.” He walked back towards the cavern and the edge of the grass. “Set up a camp here, and we’re going back right at first light. Gods, I haven’t slept in three days,” he muttered, climbing up the rocks and disappearing from view.

“Are they dead, sir?” someone asked, above them.

“They got the ending they deserved,” came the reply.


	48. Far Away Places

And now, the short summer night has passed. And now, it was sunrise.

On an unreachable ledge jutting out of the cliff’s face, two sets of clothes were flapping lazily around a wreckage of sticks and grass; a drab soldier’s vest, and a courtly dress, once white, now red. Round this spectacle, dark liquid was pooling in the crevices.

A curious mistle thrush hopped over and bobbed its head around. It inspected the liquid, and gave it a test swig. It tasted very strange. The thrush took several more swigs. Interesting.

It spread out its wings and rose, erratically, along the rock wall. Just by the top there was another ledge, with a bush on it. The thrush attempted to land there, slipped, and fell on its back. The sky above it had a nice, deep summer colour to it. The highland was swaying and humming. The breeze was coming from the east, from far away places, the sea or even beyond. The thrush opened its beak and started singing, off-key.

To its supreme indifference, the bush suddenly shook and moved away, and from behind it two naked humans emerged and took a careful look at the ground above.

The soldiers had already been gone for a while, disappeared beyond the hills. Remains of their campfire were cold in the grass nearby. The two humans climbed out of the ledge to the ground above.

Aerin looked to the rising sun. Far off and below him, the lakes of Kontaria were shimmering pink.

He breathed free. He spread out his hands, and cringed.

“Fuck. I didn’t even know I had all these muscles that are hurting right now.”

She was sore all over, too. This whole night they had spent contorted, jabbed by uneven stone, anxious that the soldiers could still return to the ledge and by chance find them. When finally, before sunrise, they heard the search party pack up and leave, it took a great effort to stay motionless and quiet with all their nerves urging them to jump and scream.

All this bottled-up emotion swelled in her now, as she watched him stretch, naked, alive in the morning light, ribcage expanding with air, body unfolding and trying to rid itself of the ache. With a little yelp she pounced on him, hung herself from his neck, and they kissed laughing, and he seized her, swept her off her feet and whirled her around, once, twice, lost balance, and they both collapsed into the grass, shuddering chortling shambles.

She laid herself down on top of him and rested her head on his chest.

“So, what are we gonna do now?” she muttered.

“It’s half a day’s walk to Ys. We’re going to cause a spectacle, showing up in there naked.”

“Hey, we still have our underwear.” She glanced back towards the ledge. “Somewhere.” She swung her leg up. “I’ve lost my shoes, though. You’ll have to carry me if my feet hurt.”

“I will absolutely do no such thing.”

“You’re the worst.” She twirled his hair, looked into his face. “We don’t have to go yet, right?”

He looked around. In the dawn light, the world around them was at complete peace: from the wide open vistas before them, to the glimmering mountains far behind.

He smiled. Very soon, he’ll be back home. Very soon, his parents and his friends will find out he’s alive and safe. He pictured the scene and laughed to himself.

But no matter what they do today, the fastest way to Kontaria will be the regular daily barge that leaves from Ys, and goes along the river to the sea ports; they never object to taking travellers along, and if you know the spot, you can jump off into the shallow water when the river goes by the forest, and take some secret paths, and in an hour or two end up in the village. The barge leaves in the morning; how early or late they arrive in the city today makes no difference.

“No, let’s stay here for a while. Nobody’s waiting for us anywhere, nobody wants anything from us. Just relax, Gabrielle. After all, we’re dead.”

She chuckled, and kissed his skin. “Let’s rest in peace then.” Grass swayed around her. Aerin’s heart beat calm beneath her ear. His hand was in her hair. Sleepiness softly clouded her mind.

“Poor Clement, though,” he muttered. “He’s gonna have a lot of explaining to do when word gets out that you’re alive.”

“Clement’s never gonna be in charge of anything larger than a chicken coop after this,” she said.

They remained like that for a long time. Eventually, she sat up.

She looked towards Kontaria. It was there, still a little unreal, tinted blue with sheer distance, but it was close now, visible, no longer just a figment of imagination to her. And real places raise in the mind concrete, practical questions. She wondered where she’ll sleep two nights from now, in what clothes, having eaten what, how, with whom. What about twenty nights from now? Two hundred nights, dead of winter? A thousand?

She arched back her neck and shook her head; it felt odd, cold and exposed, without her hair.

“Aerin?”

“What?”

“You think I’ll adjust to life there?”

He peered at her from the ground. Her shoulder blades were delicately rising under her skin; the gentle groove over her backbone caught a deeper shade. He rose up behind her. His breath warmed the back of her neck. He ran a finger down her spine. “Girl, I’ve literally never been less worried about anyone. You’ll be fine. Right away, you’ll be a huge help to the elders by telling them Oren’s coming and explaining all about him. And my family will be so grateful to you. And then – you’ll find your place. And you’ll like the people.” He glanced to the distant forest. “Except for Leapfrog. Leapfrog’s an ass.”

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms over her shoulders, backs of hands resting casually at her breasts. She rubbed her cheek against his. A cloud was soaring in the eastern horizon, an enormous rolling cumulus whitening slowly in rising sunlight, its bottom vague and foggy, its top crisp and defined, great soft thing reaching heavens from earth.

“And we’ll get to be together,” she said. “Us two, as…”

“Yeah. Us two.” He hugged her a little tighter, chest pressed against her back. He smiled crookedly to the cloud. “Hey, Gabrielle? I guess I never actually asked you this…”

“What?”

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

This was his new favourite feeling, he decided. Her giggling in his arms. A little twitching fit, her body moving lively, like a small bird in hand.

She collected herself and turned her face sideways, towards his. “Man, I don’t know. Will you take me out to cool places?”

“I’ll take you on long walks around the lake. The paths are cool as hell. There are ferns and shit.”

One last snicker. “Okay then.” She pivoted and placed her hands behind his neck, so that they sat front to front, arms and legs intertwined, a small private world of theirs in the space between their bodies. She looked him in the eyes and gave his skin a little rub. “Okay then, boyfriend.”

Aerin. Us two. Yes, very much yes. And yet, an unease wouldn’t leave her mind. Some shadow, some doubt. What is it? Oh, I see. Air it. Air it out now. She began speaking.

“Honestly though, this is a bit unnerving… Just three days ago I thought you were just this brief moment in my life, that I’d sneak you out and we’d be separated forever… Hell, I only ever helped you because you looked sad and I thought you were hot, so it was like an exciting little adventure to try to save you… Now we can be together, on our own terms, on regular boring days… I guess I never even believed you actually existed on boring days. It all happened so fast. Fuck. You know what I’m saying?”

His expression never changed. “You’re afraid that you’re founding a new life on a passion that may be short-lived. We flew together, but you’re wondering if we can walk together, too.”

She cocked her head. The corners of her mouth twitched. “Well, you can read me. That’s a good sign.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Poor girl. You’re on an unfamiliar ground, and everything worries you in advance.” He placed his hands on her cheeks. “Look, okay. I can’t promise you that we’ll work out. Maybe this is all just a haze. But I can promise you that no matter what, I will always be your friend. Because I know myself, and I know you, and I know that at the very least I’ll always really like you. Because you’re an amazing person. And no matter what, you’ll be just fine.”

She didn’t respond at first. She weaved her left hand underneath his right and took it off her face, pushed it with its back to his chest, and there she let both rest against each other, fingertip to fingertip. There was a tingling sensation to it, that same magnetic current she felt by the brook, raw sexual energy mounting between them.

It may last, it may burn out. Well, what of it? All things go. Doesn’t mean they weren’t real.

“Okay,” she said. Now she smiled. Her regular, catty smile. “So, you’re saying that you at the very least really like me?”

He smiled back. His regular, horselike smile. “I do.”

“Well, I at the very least really like you too.” She leaned in and kissed him, slowly, meticulously. In their fingertips, they felt their pulse quicken. A long while passed before they broke off.

“Okay, that’s pretty hot, keeping hands together like that,” she said. “We should have more sex with our hands untied.”

“Yeah. Starting now?”

She pushed him to the ground, straddled him, and ran her hands over his chest. “Starting now.” A strand of hair fell into her eye. She flicked it away. “Can’t wait for my hair to grow out again,” she said.

He smiled and drew her close to him. “You look cute like this too, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.” She searched his eyes. “I just want you to have something to pull at.”

Well, that was one plan for the future made. Clearly, things were looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Anyone made it to the end? If you're curious, I've put together some notes on this story, [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20093380). Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed :)


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